Elizabeth Blount (c. 1498/c. 1500/c. 1502 – 1540), commonly known during her lifetime as Bessie Blount, was a mistress of Henry VIII of England.

Blount was the daughter of Sir John Blount and Katherine Peshall, of Kinlet, Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Sir John Blount was a loyal, if unremarkable, servant to the English royal family, who accompanied King Henry to France in 1513 when he waged war against Louis XII. The Blount family was of landed gentry status but had no real national input until Blount gave birth to Henry FitzRoy, the only acknowledged illegitimate child of Henry VIII.

Her parents were married in childhood in 1491, as stated in post-mortem inquisition of Sir Thomas Blount of Kinlet. Her father, John Blount, out of a family of some twenty children, was the eldest son and heir of Sir Thomas Blount of Kinlet, Shropshire, who had been knighted by Henry VII at the battle of Stoke in 1487, on the occasion of the defeat of Lambert Simnel. Her mother was Katherine, heiress of Knightley, in Staffordshire, and of many other manors in that county, the only (legitimate) child of Sir Hugh Peshall, or Persall, a soldier of the highest distinction, who, as Knight of the Body to Henry VII, was in constant attendance on that King.

Sir Hugh is mentioned in the Ballad of Bosworth Field, with his brother-in-law, Sir Humphrey Stanley, among "four good knights" whom the Lord Stanley gives to Henry of Richmond at his request on the eve of the fight. The outline of the story bears the stamp of truth, but in strict accuracy he was of course not knighted by Henry of Richmond until, after the battle, the crown had been placed on Henry's head. During the three succeeding years to this memorable year of 1485, the name of Sir Hugh Peshall frequently occurs in the State records as being the recipient of large sums of money from Henry VII " by way of reward." He died as a young man in 1488, when his daughter Katherine was a small child. John Blount at the time of his marriage to Katherine Peshall appears to have been not more than seven years old; he is stated to have been " forty years old and more" in 1524.

William S. Childe-Pemberton writes:

It is interesting to note that, at the dawn of the Tudor epoch, with the exception of a few such as the Talbots, the Howards, and the Stanleys, many of our great families had as yet not come to the front, and the stars of the Russells, the Cavendishes, and the Cecils had not risen. The parents of Elizabeth Blount, however—the boy-bridegroom and the girl-heiress—were each through their ancestral alliances representatives of the ancient aristocracy of England, and were equally matched in lineage and estate. The marriage took place on August 1, 1491—not, we may observe, at the bride's home, but at Kinlet, the home of the bridegroom. Little change has there been in the external features of Kinlet Church since the two children, marshalled by their elders, passed with procession from hall to church to plight their troth. The old manor-house at Kinlet, demolished in the early part of the eighteenth century, was situated even nearer to the church than is the present mansion; now, as then, both church and house being wholly surrounded by park and woodland of wide extent, and remote from any village or hamlet. The old cross in the churchyard near the southern entrance must have been of great elevation; its quadrilateral base, unique in design, lofty and gabled, is still in its place, though time has wrought some ruin, and the niche in its wall has long been emptied of the saint's image it once held. The Norman doorway, the round massive arches and columns of the nave, stand firm as ever; while the spacious chancel and transepts,1 added by pious ancestors in Early English or Decorated style, still speak to us of mediaeval times, and were already venerable when that bridal procession paused before the high altar. Still in the mullioned windows, amid traces of antique glass of colour unsurpassed by modern imitations, there remains the stained-glass figure of a kneeling knight, helmeted and clad in coat embroidered with the armorial bearings of the Cornwalls, and asking of your charity prayers for his soul, as on the day when his descendant little John knelt with Katherine at the nuptial mass, four hundred and twenty years ago.

While Elizabeth was a baby, her parents and relatives were brought into association with Katherine of Aragon, when as a bride Katherine resided at Ludlow Castle during her brief marriage with Arthur, Prince of Wales. Of those who hastened to pay their respects to the young Princess of Wales the Blounts of Kinlet were surely among the first. Ludlow, that great border stronghold, a town of the utmost importance in Tudor times, was within the distance of a three hours' ride from the seat of the Blounts—the road thence to Ludlow winding by slopes and valleys along the eastern side of the Clee Hills. "No more romantic scenery is perhaps to be found in all England," writes William S. Childe-Pemberton, "than that which keeps the Clee Hills in view; and Kinlet, still noted for the size and age of its oaks—the same oaks under which the little Elizabeth played in childhood—is situated in the heart of that country of which an old rhymester sings:

Thrice happy he