How to Get Cancelled as a Medieval Mistress
Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
History Hit
4.8 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do you have to do wrong to be specifically named in a law? In the 14th Century, one of the mistresses of King Edward III found out. So who was Alice Perrers?
Kate is joined by the one and only Eleanor Janega to find out how Alice rose to power, and what brought her down?
Eleanor is one of the hosts of our sister podcast, Gone Medieval, and the author of 'The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society'.
This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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All music from Epidemic Sounds.
Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? |
| 0:03.2 | Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? |
| 0:06.8 | Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? |
| 0:10.8 | We'll sign up to History Hit, |
| 0:12.5 | where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, |
| 0:15.3 | as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, |
| 0:18.7 | plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric |
| 0:22.8 | Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore |
| 0:29.2 | the past just visit history hit dot com forward slash subscribe hello my lovely betwixters it's me |
| 0:37.4 | kate lister welcome back once again. Thank God you're here. Where have you been? We've been on tenterhooks, just waiting for you to arrive. But you're here now, and that's the main thing. But before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults, bad, dolly things, a dolly way, covering my own age, social situations, you've been a little bit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. On with the show! When do you know that you've committed a social phopar? Hmm? Because sometimes it's not particularly obvious that you've done it, is it? Did you hold someone's eye contact for a little bit too long? |
| 1:13.1 | Did you take the last piece of pudding at a party? |
| 1:16.1 | Did you get smashed on a works night out and send your boss pictures of your tits? |
| 1:19.8 | Or have you ever had a law? |
| 1:23.8 | Have you ever had a law that is written specifically about you? |
| 1:29.3 | A law that names you? |
| 1:32.2 | No? |
| 1:33.4 | Well then, you have not been committing nearly enough social fauxpars. |
| 1:38.3 | Welcome to the world of Alice Perez. |
| 2:08.7 | Thank you. of Alice Perez. Hello! Hello and welcome back to Patrix Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lester. |
| 2:15.0 | They say never meet your heroes, but I would have loved to have met Alice Perez. |
| 2:20.9 | At one point, she was the wealthiest and the most influential woman in medieval Britain. |
| 2:27.1 | And Alice got that money primarily by being a huge pain in the ass to everybody, |
... |
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