Elizabeth Blount - Later Life

Later Life

Bessie had an arranged marriage in 1522 to Gilbert Tailboys, 1st Baron Tailboys of Kyme (sometimes spelt "Talboys"), whose family was said by some to have a history of insanity. After her marriage, Blount does not figure much into the day-to-day affairs of the Tudor monarchy or in the official records. A fleeting comment was made about her in 1529, when a palace chaplain remarked that she was (or had been) better-looking than Henry's then-fiancée, Anne Boleyn, whom he concluded was competent belle ("quite beautiful") in her own right.

On 23 July 1536, her son Henry FitzRoy died, probably of tuberculosis ("consumption"). Her husband, Gilbert, Lord Tailboys, also preceded her by dying in 1530, leaving her a widow of comfortable means. Through her marriage to Gilbert Tailboys, she had three children – two sons, George and Robert, and one daughter, Elizabeth.

After the death of Tailboys, Elizabeth Blount was wooed in 1532, but unsuccessfully, by Lord Leonard Gray. She subsequently married a younger man whose Lincolnshire lands adjoined hers, Edward Clinton or Fiennes, 9th Baron Clinton (therefore becoming Elizabeth Fiennes). They were married sometime between 1533 and 1535. This union produced three daughters. For a short while, she was a lady-in-waiting to Henry's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, but due to her own health problems she left the Queen's service around the time the royal marriage was dissolved and did not serve Anne's successor, Catherine Howard. Blount returned to her husband's estates, where she died shortly after. It has traditionally been asserted that the cause of her death was consumption.