Lady Alice More was born the daughter of Sir Richard Harpur and his wife, Elizabeth Ardern. Little is known of Alice’s early life, including her year of birth, but historian Retha Warnicke has dated it to in or after 1474. Alice’s first husband was John Middleton; however, the date of their wedding ceremony is unknown. Warnicke has put forward the argument that Alice was likely already married to John by the year 1492, as her father had failed to mention her in his will of the same year. This is a convincing argument; it was not particularly unusual for a fifteenth-century father to exclude his daughter from his will if she was an established member of another household. Alice’s marriage to John represented the customary ambitions of the late medieval gentry: securing wealth, status and property. The Middleton and Ardern families were related by kinship, with John being Alice’s cousin; with both parties owning a significant number of properties in Yorkshire. Additionally, Alice’s husband was a wealthy silk merchant and a member of the Mercers’ Company (a successful trade association) and the Staple of Calais (a mercantile corporation). The couple had three children: a son and two daughters, Alice and Helen, but only Alice survived infancy.
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