Elizabeth Zouche (before 1496 – after 1553), was an English abbess. She was the last abbess of

Shaftesbury Abbey Shaftesbury Abbey was an abbey that housed nuns in Shaftesbury, Dorset. It was founded in about 888, and dissolved in 1539 during the English Reformation by the order of Thomas Cromwell, minister to King Henry VIII. At the time it was the second ...

, a Benedictine nunnery founded by Alfred the Great which was one of the largest and richest in England. She signed the deed of surrender on 23 March 1539 which brought the 650 year life of the abbey to an abrupt end and granted all its property and wealth to Henry VIII.

Life

Elizabeth Zouche came from a noble family with lands in the vicinity of Shaftesbury and was known to have been a novice at the abbey in 1496.

Abbess

She was elected as the abbess in 1529, succeeding Elizabeth Shelford who died in 1528. By the time she became abbess, the train of events leading to the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the demise of the abbey was already underway. Having assented to the

Act of Supremacy The Acts of Supremacy are two acts passed by the Parliament of England in the 16th century that established the English monarchs as the head of the Church of England; two similar laws were passed by the Parliament of Ireland establishing the En ...

in 1534, Elizabeth Zouche and the nuns at Shaftesbury were visited by two commissions of enquiry in the following year, looking at the wealth and morality of the abbey. Shaftesbury was at this time the second richest nunnery in England. When the dissolution process began in 1536, as one of the larger abbeys, Shaftesbury was not immediately affected, but there was some impact as the abbess took in the prioress and two nuns displaced from a small Benedictine house in Somerset.

Dissolution

When the noose started to close on the larger houses like Shaftesbury in 1538, Elizabeth Zouche at first tried to negotiate, offering the sum of 500 marks to the king and £100 to

Thomas Cromwell Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false char ...

to allow herself and her nuns to remain in their abbey, "by some other name and apparel". The deal was not accepted and the inevitable demise of the abbey came in March 1539. Elizabeth Zouche surrendered the abbey to

John Tregonwell Sir John Tregonwell (died 1565) was an Cornish jurist, a principal agent of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He served as Judge of the High Court of Admiralty from 1524 to 1536.C.S. Gilbert, ''An Historical ...

on Passion Sunday, 23 March, signing an ignominious deed of surrender, but not before she had negotiated generous pensions for herself and her fellow nuns on the previous day. The total of all the pensions was £431, of which Elizabeth Zouche's was by far the largest individual pension at £133 6s. 8d. Compared with average labour earnings of the period, the equivalent sum now would be £871,000 a year.

Later life

Records show that Elizabeth Zouche kept in touch with her former nuns, giving fifty of them a present of the value of a goose in 1553. It was also authorised in 1552 that the full value of her pension could pass on her death as an annuity to Sir John Zouche of Ansty, who is presumed to have been a relative and subsequently served as the MP for Shaftesbury. She was evidently still alive in 1553, but it is not known how much longer she lived.

Fictional portrayal

Elizabeth Zouche appears as a character in ''The Butcher's Daughter'', a novel by

Victoria Glendinning Victoria Glendinning (''née'' Seebohm; born 23 April 1937) is a British biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. She is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. She won the James Tait ...

based on the dissolution of the abbey, which was published in 2018. Elizabeth Zouche appears also in

The Mirror and the Light ''The Mirror & The Light'' is an historical novel by the English writer Hilary Mantel. Following ''Wolf Hall'' (2009) and '' Bring Up the Bodies'' (2012), it is the final instalment in her trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, ...

, the final part of

Hilary Mantel Dame Hilary Mary Mantel ( ; born Thompson; 6 July 1952 – 22 September 2022) was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, '' Every Day Is Mother's Day'', was relea ...

's trilogy covering the life of

, published in 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zouche, Elizabeth Date of birth unknown Date of death unknown Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Abbesses of Shaftesbury 16th-century English nuns 16th-century Christian nuns People of the Protestant Reformation