Elizabeth Tyldesley

Who was Elizabeth Tyldesley?

Elizabeth Tyldesley was a 17th-century abbess at the Poor Clare Convent at Gravelines.

Elizabeth Tyldesley born in 1585, was the daughter of Thomas Tyldesley of Morleys Hall, Astley and Myerscough Hall and Elizabeth Anderton of Lostock, in Lancashire. Her family were recusants and her mother arranged a pension for the Roman Catholic priest, Ambrose Barlow, so that he could secretly carry out priestly duties, offering Mass in the homes of Roman Catholics in the Leigh parish. Her grandfather, Edward Tyldesley, had left her a dowry of £500, but she never married.

Instead Elizabeth joined the English community of nuns of the Order of St. Clare, then called "Claresses", at Gravelines, at that time part of the Spanish Netherlands. The Poor Clare Convent at Gravelines was a religious community founded in 1607 by Mary Ward for English Roman Catholic women who wished to live the contemplative life of a nun, which was impossible after the Reformation and its consequence, the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Elizabeth was one of seven candidates who received their religious habits on 5 February 1609, when she was about 24 years old.