History further informs us, that king John repaired Godstow nunnery, and endowed it with yearly revenues, "that these holy virgins might releeve with their prayers, the soules of his father king Henrie, and of lady Rosamund there interred."[566] ... In what situation her remains were found at the dissolution of the nunnery, we learn from Leland: "Rosamundes tumbe at Godstowe nunnery was taken up [of] late; it is a stone with this inscription, Tumba Rosamundæ. Her bones were closid in lede, and withyn that bones were closyd yn lether. When it was opened a very swete smell came owt of it."[567] See Hearne's discourse above quoted, written in 1718; at which time he tells us, were still seen by the pool at Woodstock the foundations of a very large building, which were believed to be the remains of Rosamond's labyrinth.
To conclude this (perhaps too prolix) account, Henry had two sons by Rosamond, from a computation of whose age, a modern historian has endeavoured to invalidate the received story. These were William Longue-espé (or Long-sword), earl of Salisbury, and Geoffrey, bishop of Lincolne.[568] Geoffrey was the younger of Rosamond's sons, and yet is said to have been twenty years old at the time of his election to that see in 1173. Hence this writer concludes, that king Henry fell in love with Rosamond in 1149, when in king Stephen's reign he came over to be knighted by the king of Scots; he also thinks it probable that Henry's commerce with this lady "broke off upon his marriage with Eleanor (in 1152) and that the young lady, by a natural effect of grief and resentment at the defection of her lover, entered on that occasion into the nunnery of Godstowe, where she died probably before the rebellion of Henry's sons in 1173." (Carte's Hist. vol. i. p. 652.) But let it be observed, that Henry was but sixteen years old when he came over to be knighted; that he staid but eight months in this island, and was almost all the time with the king of Scots; that he did not return back to England till 1153, the year after his marriage with Eleanor; and that no writer drops the least hint of Rosamond's having ever been abroad with her lover, nor indeed is it probable that a boy of sixteen should venture to carry over a mistress to his mother's court. If all these circumstances are considered, Mr. Carte's account will be found more incoherent and improbable than that of the old ballad; which is also countenanced by most of our old historians.
Indeed the true date of Geoffrey's birth, and consequently of Henry's commerce with Rosamond, seems to be best ascertained from an ancient manuscript in the Cotton library: wherein it is thus registered of Geoffrey Plantagenet: "Natus est 5° Hen. II. [1159.] Factus est miles 25° Hen. II. [1179.] Elect. in Episcop. Lincoln. 28° Hen. II. [1182.]" Vid. Chron. de Kirkstall (Domitian XII.) Drake's Hist. of York, p. 422.
The ballad of Fair Rosamond appears to have been first published in "Strange Histories, or Songs and Sonnets, of Kinges, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights, and Gentlemen, &c. By Thomas Delone. Lond. 1607." 12mo.
It is here printed (with conjectural emendations), from four ancient copies in black-letter; two of them in the Pepys library.
[It is also printed in the Crown Garland of Golden Roses, and Garland of Goodwill. Reprinted by the Percy Society.
In the Collection of Old Ballads, 1723, vol. i. p. 1, is another ballad on the same subject, with the title, The Unfortunate Concubine, or Rosamond's Overthrow.
The story is also treated in Warner's Albion's England (ch. 41).]