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 to the throne with any degree of validity. To strengthen his claim and unite the two feuding noble houses, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort agreed that the latter's son should marry the former's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, who upon the death of her brothers became the heiress of the House of York. Henry Tudor agreed to this plan and in December 1483 publicly swore an oath to that effect in the cathedral in Rennes, France. A month earlier, an uprising in his favour, led by Buckingham, had been crushed. Richard III's first Parliament of January 1484 stripped Elizabeth of