The Thames flows on past the wooded glades of Wytham Abbey, and then
revives the memory of Fair Rosamond as it skirts the scanty ruins of
Godstow Nunnery. This religious house upon the river-bank was founded in
the reign of Henry I., and the ruins are some remains of the walls and
of a small chapter-house in which Rosamond's corpse was deposited. It
was at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, then a royal palace, that in the
twelfth century Henry II. built "Fair Rosamond's Bower" for his charmer,
who was the daughter of Lord Clifford. This bower was surrounded by a
labyrinth. Queen Eleanor, whom the king had married only from ambitious
motives, was much older than he, and he had two sons by Rosamond, whom
he is said to have first met at Godstow Nunnery. The bower consisted of
arched vaults underground. There are various legends of the discovery of
Rosamond by Eleanor, the most popular being that the queen discovered
the ball of silk the king used to thread the maze of the labyrinth, and
following it found the door and entered the bower. She is said to have
ill-treated and even poisoned Rosamond, but the belief now is that
Rosamond retired to the nunnery from sorrow at the ultimate defection of
her royal lover, and did not die for several years. The story has been
the favorite theme of the poets, and we are told that her body was
buried in the nunnery, and wax lights placed around the tomb and kept
continually burning. Subsequently, her remains were reinterred in the
chapter-house, with a Latin inscription, which is thus translated:
"This tomb doth here enclose the world's most beauteous rose--
Rose passing sweet erewhile, now naught but odor vile."
[Illustration: GODSTOW NUNNERY.]