A small chapel, and a wall, enclosing an ample space, are all now
remaining of the Benedictine nunnery at Godstow. A hazel grows near the
chapel, the fruit of which is always apparently perfect, but is
invariably found to be hollow.
This nunnery derives its chief interest from having been the
burial-place of Rosamond. The principal circumstances of her story are
thus related by Stowe: “Rosamond, the fair daughter of Walter lord
Clifford, concubine to Henry II., (poisoned by queen Eleanor, as some
thought,) died at Woodstock, (A. D. 1177,) where king Henry had made for
her a house of wonderful working; so that no man or woman might come to
her, but he that was instructed by the king, or such as were right
secret with him touching the matter. This house, after some, was named
Labyrinthus, or Dædalus work, which was wrought like unto a knot in a
garden, called a maze: but it was commonly said, that lastly the queen
came to her by a clue of thread, or silk, and so dealt with her, that
she lived not long after: but when she was dead, she was buried at
Godstow, in a house of nuns, beside Oxford, with these verses upon her
tomb:
“Hic jacet in tumbâ, Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda:
Non redolet, sed olet, quæ redolere solet.”
After her death, she appears to have been considered as a saint, from
the following inscription on a stone cross, which, Leland says, was
erected near the nunnery:
Qui meat huc, oret, signumque salutis adoret,
Utque sibi detur veniam, Rosamunda precetur.
A fanatical priest, Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, visiting the nunnery at
Godstow, and observing a tomb covered with silk, and splendidly
illuminated, which he found, on inquiry, to be the tomb of Rosamond,
commanded her to be taken up, and buried without the church, lest the
Christian religion should grow into contempt. This brutal order was
instantly obeyed: but “the chaste sisters,” says Speed, “gathered her
bones, and put them in a perfumed bag, enclosing them so in lead, and
laid them again in the church, under a fair large grave-stone, about
whose edges a fillet of brass was inlaid, and thereon written her name
and praise: these bones were at the suppression of the nunnery so
found.”[237]
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