Rosamund Clifford
Rosamund Clifford (c.
1150- c.
1176), often called
"The Fair Rosamund" or the
"Rose of the World", was the long-time mistress of King
Henry II of England, famous in
English folklore.
The daughter of
marcher lord
Walter Clifford, who had assumed the surname after taking possession of
Clifford Castle on the
River Wye, she first met the King when her father performed some service for him in the course of Henry's campaigns in
Wales.
Historians are divided over whether or not Rosamund's relationship with the King produced children. The question is complicated by the difficulty of separating the facts of Rosamund's life from the profusion of legends surrounding it. Many historians have concluded that Rosamund most likely bore Henry a single child, but cannot identify it or even provide a specific date of birth. Some modern writers, including
Alison Weir, are of the opinion that Rosamund had no children; but whether this means she never gave birth or merely that none of her children survived remains unclear.
Legend commonly attributes Rosamund to two of King Henry's favourite illegitimate sons,
Geoffrey Plantagenet (
1151-
1212),
Archbishop of York, and
William Longsword (
1176-
1226),
Earl of Salisbury. This idea was not widely believed until it was written about centuries later. Of these, Geoffrey is disregarded as being her son. Henry and Rosamund met about
1166, and their relationship lasted until 1176. Geoffrey and Rosamund would therefore have been about the same age, and Geoffrey was therefore almost certainly the son of
Ykenai, another mistress of Henry.
William de Longespee's maternity was a mystery for many years, but at last the truth was discovered when charters issued by him were found to contain references to "Comitissa Ida, mater mea." (Bradenstoke Cartulary, 1979). This Ida is now known to be Ida, Countess of Norfolk.
Not much is known about Rosamund, but she is discussed in books about
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry's Queen. The legends concerning her life abound, but few hard facts are available. The story that she was poisoned by a jealous Eleanor is certainly untrue, and so is the tale that Henry constructed the hunting lodge at
Woodstock for her and surrounded it with a garden that was a
labyrinth ("Rosamund's Bower," which was pulled down when
Blenheim Palace was built nearby). During the
Elizabethan era, the stories gained popularity, but the
Ballad of Fair Rosamund by
Thomas Delaney and the
Complaint of Rosamund by
Samuel Daniel (
1592) are both purely fictional.
Authorities differ over whether Rosamund stayed quietly in seclusion at Woodstock while Henry was back and forth to his continental possessions or whether she traveled with him as a member of his household. If the former, the two of them could not have spent more than about a quarter of the time between 1166 and 1176 together. Historians do seem to agree, however, that Rosamund, who came into Henry's life just as Eleanor lost the ability to bear children, was Eleanor's opposite in personality, and that Henry and Rosamund truly did share a deep love.
Henry's liaison with Rosamund became public knowledge in 1174; it ended when she retired to the nunnery at
Godstow near
Oxford in 1176, shortly before her death.
Henry and the Clifford family paid for her tomb at Godstow in the choir of the convent's church and an endowment for it to be tended by the nuns. It became a popular local shrine until
1191, two years after Henry's death.
Hugh of Lincoln,
Bishop of Lincoln, while visiting Godstow, noticed Rosamund's tomb right in front of the high altar. The tomb was laden with flowers and candles, demonstrating that the local people were still praying there. Calling Rosamund a
harlot, the bishop ordered her remains removed from the church. This was part of the long-term campaign by the
Roman Catholic Church to eradicate earlier
Norse and
Anglo-Saxon traditions of marriage amongst the nobility. Her tomb was moved outside of the abbey church itself to the cemetery at the nuns' chapter house next to it, where it could still be visited until it was destroyed in the
Dissolution of the Monasteries under
Henry VIII of England. The remains of Godstow Priory still stand and are open to the public.
Author
Bertrice Small's book "Rosamund" (2004) is a fictional story about a woman named Rosamund, who had a similar affair with King Henry VIII and was friends with his wife
Catherine of Aragon, while seeking love at Friarsgate.
Sharon Kay Penman also writes about the liaison in her "Time and Chance".
* Biography from
Who's Who in British History (1998), H. W. Wilson Company.
Who's Who in British History, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998.
*W. L. Warren,
Henry II, 1973.
Rosamund Clifford is mentioned in Virginia Henley's historical romance, "The Falcon and the Flower." (1988)
*
Photo of Godstow Priory
