Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey

• 1. Introduction

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  Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey, died on the 4th of April 1497 without knowing that two of her granddaughters would one day become queens of England. She did not live to see the reign of Henry VIII, yet the family tree she helped build would shape that reign more than almost any other. Born at Ashwellthorpe Hall in Norfolk sometime before 1445, she was the only child of Sir Frederick Tilney, who died before she turned two. She married twice, witnessed a king's deposition, survived a husband's imprisonment in the Tower, and raised eleven children with her second husband. Centuries later, historians debate even where she was buried. The questions her story raises are worth sitting with: how did a young heiress caught in the wreckage of the Wars of the Roses emerge as the matriarch of the most powerful family in Tudor England?

• 2. An Heiress Forged by Loss

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  Sir Frederick Tilney of Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk died before 1447, leaving his only daughter as heiress to his estates. Elizabeth's mother did not remain a widow for long. Before 1449 she married Sir John Say of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, who served as Speaker of the House of Commons. Through this remarriage Elizabeth gained half-siblings on the Say side, including Anne Say, whose granddaughter Jane Seymour would become Henry VIII's third queen. Elizabeth's ancestry extended deep into the Welsh Marches. Through her maternal grandmother Elizabeth Cockayne, she descended from Reginald Grey, 2nd Baron Grey de Ruthyn, whose line reached back to Welsh Prince Gruffydd II ap Madog, Lord of Dinas Bran. On her father's side, she was co-heiress to the manors of Fisherwick and Shelfield in Walsall, Staffordshire, a right tracing to Roger Hillary, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who had died in 1356. By the time she came of age, Elizabeth held property in Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and Staffordshire, spread across an inheritance assembled over generations.

• 3. The Yorkist Court

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  Around 1466 Elizabeth married Sir Humphrey Bourchier, son and heir of John Bourchier, 1st Baron Berners. The marriage brought her to court, where she served as lady-in-waiting to Queen consort Elizabeth Woodville. She had already carried the queen's train at Elizabeth Woodville's coronation in May 1465 at Westminster Abbey. When King Edward IV was ousted from the throne, Elizabeth accompanied the queen and her children into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey and was present at the birth of the future King Edward V. She stayed with the queen until Edward IV was restored to power, a period of personal danger that gave her a close view of royal politics at their most volatile. Sir Humphrey Bourchier was killed at the Battle of Barnet on the 14th of April 1471, fighting on the Yorkist side. The marriage had produced a son, John Bourchier, who would become the 2nd Baron Berners, and two daughters. Elizabeth was widowed with three children before the decade was out.

• 4. Marrying Into the Howards

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  On the 30th of April 1472, by arrangement of the king, Elizabeth married Thomas Howard, the future Earl of Surrey. In 1475 she inherited Ashwellthorpe Manor from her late father's estate. Thomas Howard was a close friend of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and when Richard was crowned king in 1483, Elizabeth served as an attendant to Queen Anne Neville while Thomas bore the Sword of State. The following years brought catastrophe. On the 22nd of August 1485, Thomas's father John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk was killed at the Battle of Bosworth fighting for Richard III. Thomas himself was wounded at Bosworth and imprisoned in the Tower for several years; the dukedom of Norfolk was forfeited. Elizabeth's situation was precarious but not helpless. Her husband's attainder contained a specific provision: she would not lose her own inheritance. On the 3rd of October 1485, writing from the Isle of Sheppey, she sent a letter to John Paston, who had married her cousin, complaining that Lord FitzWalter, an adherent of the new king Henry VII, had dismissed all her servants. FitzWalter, however, could not seize her manor of Askwell. By December 1485 she had moved to London, near St Katharine's by the Tower, close to her imprisoned husband.

• 5. Matriarch of the Tudor Age

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  After Thomas Howard was released from prison and his earldom and estates were restored, he entered the service of Henry VII, beginning the family's rehabilitation under the new dynasty. Elizabeth's second marriage produced eleven children. Her eldest son, Thomas Howard, became the 3rd Duke of Norfolk and led the Howard family to the position of premier family of England during Henry VIII's reign. Her daughter Elizabeth Howard married Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and was the mother of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second queen. Her son Lord Edmund Howard was the father of Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth queen. Both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were executed. Elizabeth Tilney's great-granddaughter through Anne Boleyn was Queen Elizabeth I. Another granddaughter, Mary Howard, was alleged to have been one of Henry VIII's mistresses, alongside Elizabeth Carew and Mary Boleyn. Mary, daughter of Elizabeth's eldest son Thomas, married Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset, the king's illegitimate son. The Howard family's proximity to royal power in the Tudor period was extraordinary, and it ran directly through Elizabeth Tilney's children.

• 6. A Disputed Burial

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  Historian Marilyn Roberts has presented evidence challenging the long-held belief that Elizabeth Tilney was buried in the nun's choir of the Convent of the Minoresses outside Aldgate. The will traditionally cited as hers was written nine years after she died, and it refers to the author as Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk. Elizabeth Tilney, who died in 1497 when her husband held the title of Earl of Surrey rather than Duke of Norfolk, would have used the style Countess of Surrey, not Duchess. Roberts concludes the will cannot be hers. Elizabeth has also been confused with Elizabeth Talbot, the last Mowbray Duchess of Norfolk, who is confirmed to have been buried at Aldgate. With Aldgate ruled out, Elizabeth Tilney's actual burial place is unknown. Her family lived at Sheriff Hutton Castle near York at the time of her death, but the likeliest candidate for her resting place is Thetford Priory in Norfolk, which served by then as the mausoleum of the Howard family. Eight months after her death, on the 8th of November 1497, Thomas Howard obtained a licence to marry Agnes Tilney, Elizabeth's own cousin.

• 7. Skelton's Laurel and Long Melford

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  In 1495, the poet laureate John Skelton visited Sheriff Hutton Castle as a guest of the Howard family and composed The Garlande of Laurell in their honour. The poem commemorates an occasion when Elizabeth Tilney, addressed as the Countess of Surrey, together with three of her daughters, Anne, Elizabeth, and Muriel, and the gentlewomen of her household, placed upon Skelton's head a garland of laurel worked in silks, gold, and pearls. The gesture was a formal act of homage to the poet. Elizabeth's likeness was also preserved in stained glass at Holy Trinity Church in Long Melford, Suffolk, where she is depicted facing Elizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norfolk, with both figures shown beneath the Mowbray family's coat of arms. A romanticized fictional account of her life was later written by Juliet Dymoke in The Sun in Splendour, which portrays Elizabeth, called "Bess" in the novel, at the court of King Edward IV. The stained glass portrait at Long Melford, the poem's garland ceremony, and Skelton's verses are among the most concrete personal images of Elizabeth Tilney that survive.