♀Elizabeth (surname unknown)

Elizabeth (died 1526) lived in the parish of Harpsden, near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, where she was married to Humphrey Elmes; she survived her husband by no more than a few months, and both their wills were proved on the same day, 20 October 1526. She was probably the twelfth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Anthony Elmes (died by 1574).

Widowhood

Humphrey made his will on 12 July 1526. By 2 October Elizabeth was a widow and made her own, as “Elizabeth Elmes widowe”. She asked to be buried “in the Chapell of Saint Leonard in the parishe church of Henley upon Thamys”, left a bequest to the high altar of Harpsden, and asked for “a stone … to be laide upon Humfrey Elmes my late husbond and me”. She was dead within three weeks: both wills were proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury^W on 20 October 1526.

Family

Her mother, “Agnes Polsted my mother”, was then the wife of Thomas Polsted, whom Elizabeth called “my father in lawe”, in the usage of the time her stepfather. She left him “a great Ryng” and her mother a ring, and named her brother Henry Polsted and her sisters Margaret and Anne Polsted, who carried her stepfather’s surname. Thomas and Henry were her executors.

To “Antony Elmes my sonne” she left “a newe fetherbed a buckell of golde and a brasse pott”. She also provided for five daughters, Anne (the eldest), Elizabeth, Dorothy, Katherine and Martha. The son was most likely the Anthony Elmes of Bolney, in Harpsden, through whom the line descends.

Notes

Her maiden name

Her will names her mother, her stepfather and her Polsted brother and sisters, but not her own father. Robert Battle and Henry B. Hoff’s study of the Elmes family in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (2022) gives her maiden name as Packer; no record of her own gives it, and it is not used here.

The son Anthony

The Antony of the 1526 wills is taken to be Anthony Elmes of Bolney (died by 1574) on the strength of the same 2022 study. Both families belonged to Harpsden and Henley. The identification is probable rather than proved.