High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Ela, 3rd Countess of Salisbury (1187 24 August 1261) was a wealthy English heiress and the suo jure Countess of Salisbury, having succeeded to the title in 1196 upon the death of her father, William FitzPatrick, 2nd Earl of Salisbury. Her husband William Longespee, an illegitimate half-brother of kings Richard I of England and John of England assumed the title of 3rd Earl of Salisbury by right of his marriage to Ela, which took place in 1196 when she was nine years old. Ela held the post of Sheriff of Wiltshire for two years after William's death, then became a nun, and eventually Abbess of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire which she had founded in 1229. Mary, Queen of Scots, English kings Edward IV and Richard III, and three of the queens consort of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and Catherine Howard were among her many descendants.