This Day in History: 1294-10-28

On 28th October 1294, Alice de Lacy and Thomas Earl of Lancaster married. Alice was 13 and Thomas about 16. The marriage was not successful and they lived quite separate lives. Whether they divorced or not (possibly in 1318) is debatable. During his lifetime Thomas had control of her inheritance from her father, Henry de Lacy. By the terms of their marriage settlement, the bulk of her great inheritance from her father, which included the earldom of Lincoln and many other estates, was to go to Thomas, with reversion to Thomas’s heirs. Her father also came to an agreement with the king that should Alice have no children, her father’s Earldom of Lincoln would pass into the royal family on her death.