Leland, diligent antiquary, tells us that in after-years Rosamond’s tomb was here, inscribed “Tumba Rosamundæ,” and that her bones had been found, enclosed in lead, “and within that closed in leather; when it was opened there was a very swete smell came out of it.” Time thus gave the lie to that fearful old epitaph of King John’s day.
The nunnery of Godstow when dissolved in the reign of Henry the Eighth contained eighteen nuns, and its annual income was £274; a considerable sum as prices then ruled. The property was granted to that Dr. Owen who at the same time secured Cumnor, and the domestic buildings became a secular residence. This was held during the Civil War by Colonel Walter, and was taken by Fairfax in May 1646, and burned.
All we see nowadays of Godstow nunnery is a small building, ruined and roofless, apparently of no very great antiquity, for besides the Perpendicular window there are no other evidences of Gothic architecture, the two other windows being merely flat-headed Elizabethan insertions.
Efforts have been made from time to time to discover the remains of Rosamond. Two stone coffins were dug up about 1800, and in one of them were the bones of a young woman. On the supposition that this was the sarcophagus of Rosamond, a once well-known antiquary and citizen of Oxford, Alderman Fletcher, appropriated it, and conceived the eccentric idea of being buried therein; and when his time came, in 1826, he was accordingly laid in it, in the church of Yarnton, a few miles distant.
An uncommon plant, said to have been introduced from foreign parts by the nuns, still grows freely in these meadows by the grey ruins. It is known to botanists as Aristolochia clematitis, but to ordinary country folk as “birthwort” and was used in confinement cases. You may identify it by its heart-shaped leaf and bold yellow flower.
The charm of the river fades away after passing Medley Lock and nearing Oxford, and suffers a change into the commercial ragged edges and untidy squalid purlieus of a great city.
We may read in old dry-as-dust authors how “Medley” derives from “Middleway”—this being midway between Godstow and Oxford—but we need not (indeed, we had better not) put any faith in that derivation. Also, according to those same authorities, it was a scene of great resort for “divers pleasures.” Of what those diversified pleasures chiefly consisted we must judge rather from the verses of George Withers than from the grudging phrase of Dryasdust, who, forgetful of his own youth, gives us no details. But let George Withers himself inform us:
“In summer-time to Medley
My love and I would goe,
The boatmen there stood ready