Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey
Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey (before 1445 – 4 April 1497) was an English heiress who became the first wife of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk (when still Earl of Surrey). She served successively as a lady-in-waiting to two Queen consorts, namely Elizabeth Woodville, wife of King Edward IV, and later as Lady of the Bedchamber to that Queen's daughter, Elizabeth of York, the wife of King Henry VII. She stood as joint godmother to Princess Margaret Tudor at her baptism. Her eldest son was Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Through two of her other children she was a grandmother of two queens consort of King Henry VIII, namely through her daughter Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire she was the maternal grandmother of Queen Anne Boleyn and through a younger son, Lord Edmund Howard, she was the paternal grandmother of Queen Catherine Howard. Thus Elizabeth's great-grand-daughter was Queen Elizabeth I, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Her son Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk's daughter, Mary, married the king's illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset. Elizabeth is commemorated as the "Countess of Surrey" in John Skelton's poem, The Garlande of Laurell, written following his visit to the Howard residence of Sheriff Hutton Castle. Family Elizabeth Tilney was born at Ashwellthorpe Hall sometime before 1445, the only child of Sir Frederick Tilney, of Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk, and Boston, Lincolnshire, and Elizabeth Cheney (1422–1473) of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire. Sir Frederick Tilney died before 1447, and before 1449 Elizabeth's mother married as her second husband Sir John Say of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, Speaker of the House of Commons, by whom she had three sons, Sir William, Sir Thomas and Leonard, and four daughters, Anne (wife of Sir Henry Wentworth of Nettlestead, Suffolk), Elizabeth (wife of Thomas Sampson), Katherine (wife of Thomas Bassingbourne), and Mary (wife of Sir Philip Calthorpe). A fifth daughter died as a young child. Henry VIII's third queen consort, Jane Seymour, was the granddaughter of Henry Wentworth and Anne Say, and thus a second cousin to Henry VIII's second and fifth queens consort, Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. Elizabeth's paternal grandparents were Sir Philip Tilney and Isabel Thorpe, and her maternal grandparents were Sir Laurence Cheney of Fen Ditton and Elizabeth Cockayne, widow of Sir Philip Butler. Elizabeth Cockayne was the daughter of Sir John Cockayne, Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Ida de Grey. Ida was a daughter of Welsh Marcher Lord Reginald Grey, 2nd Baron Grey de Ruthyn and Eleanor Le Strange of Blackmere. Through her mother, Ida was a direct descendant of Welsh Prince Gruffydd II ap Madog, Lord of Dinas Bran and his wife Emma de Audley. Elizabeth was co-heiress to the manors of Fisherwick and Shelfield in Walsall, Staffordshire by right of her descent from Roger Hillary, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (d. 1356). Marriages Elizabeth married her first husband, Sir Humphrey Bourchier, the son and heir of John Bourchier, 1st Baron Berners, and his wife, Margery, in about 1466. The marriage