lady percy

Elizabeth Mortimer (called "Kate" by Shakespeare) was born 12 February 1371, the daughter of Edmund Mortimer, Third Earl of March, and Phillipa Plantagenet.  Through her mother's bloodline, Elizabeth was the granddaughter of Lionel of Antwerp (and therefore great-granddaughter of King Edward III) and so was possessed of royal blood.  She had two brothers, Roger and Edmund.  Roger, the Earl of March after their father, was directly in the line of royal succession, and his son, Edmund, was officially designated as heir to Richard II.

Elizabeth became Lady Percy when she married Hotspur in 1380, when he was 16 and she only 9 years old.  They had two children, Henry and Elizabeth, both of whom later married descendents of the Earl of Westmoreland; Henry also fought at Agincourt under the command of King Henry V, his late father's onetime enemy.  After Hotspur's death at Shrewsbury, Elizabeth remarried to Baron Thomas Camoys, but they had no children together.  She died in 1417 of natural causes at the age of 46. 

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