Elizabeth Stafford, Countess of Sussex Elizabeth Stafford, Countess of Sussex Elizabeth Stafford (c. 1479 – 11 May 1532) was an English noblewoman. Elizabeth Stafford was the daughter of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Lady Katherine Woodville, the daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers, by Jacquetta of Luxembourg, daughter of Pierre de Luxembourg, Count of St. Pol, and was thus a niece of Elizabeth Woodville, queen consort to King Edward IV. By her father's marriage to Katherine Woodville, Elizabeth Stafford had two brothers, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, and Henry Stafford, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and a sister, Anne, who married firstly,
Elizabeth Woodville she was forced to yield pre-eminence to Henry's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and her influence on events in these years, and her eventual departure from court into retirement, remains obscure. Elizabeth Woodville was born about 1437, possibly in October, at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire. She was the first-born child of a socially unequal marriage between Sir Richard Woodville and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, which briefly scandalised the English court. The Woodvilles, though an old and respectable family, were gentry rather than noble, a landed and wealthy family that had previously produced commissioners of the peace, sheriffs, and MPs rather than peers of