Elizabeth Scott, Countess of Eldon


Elizabeth "Bessie" Scott, Countess of Eldon, formerly Elizabeth "Bessie" Surtees, was the wife of John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon.
She was the daughter of Aubone Surtees, a banker of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and his wife, the former Elizabeth Stephenson, and married Scott in Blackshiels, Scotland, on 19 November 1772. The marriage was officially blessed two months later at St. Nicholas's Church, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The couple had eloped when the earl, who was from a relatively poor Newcastle family, was training to be a clergyman. His occupation as a curate was inadequate to keep a wife and trained instead as a lawyer. His success both in law and business was such that by the 1790s he was wealthy enough to buy the Eldon estate near Sedgefield, but the couple did not live there.
The couple had three, or possibly four, children: