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Home / People / Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire

Historical person

Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire

1480–1538

Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire, was an English noblewoman and the wife of Thomas Boleyn, later Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond. Through her children Mary, Anne and George Boleyn she became closely connected to the political and dynastic upheavals of Henry VIII’s reign.

Elizabeth had served at the Tudor court before Anne Boleyn’s rise and was part of the family network that benefited from Thomas Boleyn’s diplomatic career. She lived through the executions of Anne and George in 1536 and died in 1538, two years after the family’s sudden fall from royal favour.

Alison Weir’s The Grandmother’s Tale presents Elizabeth Boleyn as the matriarch of the Boleyn household and mother of Mary, Anne and George. Her position connects the family’s earlier court advancement with Anne Boleyn’s spectacular rise and fall, while the novel uses Elizabeth’s experience to show what Henry VIII’s favour, factional ambition and the destruction of her children cost the older generation of the family.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire (1 series)

Six Tudor Queens in Order

by Alison Weir 21 books 4.2(79,643)

The Six Tudor Queens sequence retells the lives of Henry VIII’s wives through six full-length novels. Twelve companion stories shift attention to relatives, servants, artists and courtiers affected by the same events, while Six Tudor Queens: Writing a New Story explains the project’s historical method. In the Shadow…

All books in this series