Sherlock Willis was an Oxford friend of Richard Whately, whom she met in 1820, and married in 1821 in Cheltenham; she was living there with her widowed mother, when Whately came with Willis to take the waters. The Whatelys moved to Halesworth, a living taken by Richard who was required to give up his college fellowship at Oriel on marrying. Elizabeth found the parishioners there to be in a state of "heathenish ignorance". They had five children; Elizabeth herself and her two elder daughters were in time active in religiously-inspired works. Elizabeth was ill in Halesworth, and a sister came to visit, becoming ill also; the malady was called "typhus fever". They returned to Oxford after three years, when Richard became head of St Alban's Hall, Oxford in 1825. Elizabeth Whately knew the leaders of what would be the Tractarian group socially, riding with John Henry Newman on 7 October 1831, according to his diary. John Keble had visited the Whately's at Halesworth, reading to them from the "Christian Year" in manuscript; and the Whatelys called on the newly married Edward Pusey and his wife on 18 September 1828. Elizabeth had some criticism of a sermon of Edward Hawkins, Provost of Oriel College, causing Richard to write an apology on 2 March 1831, if not quite seriously. In the early 1830s, Richard Whately was made Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, and the family moved to Ireland. But the marriage was under strain. Joseph Blanco White formed part of the household, as tutor to Edward Whately. The archbishop came to view his theology as a bad influence on his wife, who was experiencing a crisis of her Christian faith. Matters came to a head at the end of 1834, over a translation Blanco White, who was in transition to a Unitarian position, was making from August Neander. Elizabeth had a confiding relationship with Blanco White, as did her sister Charlotte who was aware of the strife, and they kept in touch by letter when he had left Dublin. At the end of her life, from December 1834, Felicia Hemans spent time at Redesdale, the Whately's place in Kilmacud, and corresponded with Elizabeth. The Whatelys were in Rugby visiting Thomas Arnold in autumn 1835, and Elizabeth made an impression on the young William Charles Lake. Tom Arnold, son of the family, wrote of her:  Her features were far from regular, but in her best days the eyes beamed with kindness and intelligence, and wonderfully lit up the rest of the face.