Lady Wilton
(1836-1919)

Volume 1, page 254, sitting number 1196.

Lady Elizabeth Charlotte Louisa Craven was born in 1836, the eldest child of William Craven, 2nd Earl of Craven, and his wife Lady Mary Emily née Grimston. On 11 August 1858 she married Arthur Edward Holland Grey Egerton, elder son of Thomas Grosvenor Egerton, 2nd Earl of Wilton. The marriage produced no children. Her husband succeeded his father on 7 March 1882 but died a few years later on, at the age of 51, on 18 January 1885. Lady Wilton married, secondly, Arthur Vickris Pryor on 14 September 1886. She died without issue on 8 March 1919.

An obituary appeared in the Coventry Evening Telegraph (10 March 1919). 'The death is announced at the advanced age of 82 of Elizabeth, Countess of Wilton, which occurred after some weeks' illness at Egerton Lodge, Melton Mowbray. Deceased was the eldest of five daughters born to the second Earl of Craven, who as Recorder of Coventry and Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire, by a daughter of the first Earl of Verulam, and her marriage with the third Earl of Wilton took place in 1858. He died in 1885, and in the following year she became the wife of Mr Arthur Vickris Pryor, D.L., J.P., but retained her title. 

'Lady Wilton was a great sportswoman, and one of the cleverest women that ever rode to hounds. In Leicestershire she was known as "The Queen of Molton," and she was one of the most charming and liberal hostesses imaginable. The older generation of Coventry people will remember her when she resided at Coombe, and also her beautiful sisters, one of whom is the present Countess of Coventry.

'Several of her ancestors were masters of foxhounds, and in the old days there were no greater supporters of hare coursing than the second Earl of Craven, and his family.'