'Fair Rosamund' Well to be Restored at Blenheim Palace

Started by cinrit, July 23, 2014, 11:37:33 AM

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cinrit

QuoteA royal well believed to have been built by King Henry II for his mistress to bathe in is undergoing restoration work at Blenheim Palace.

Fair Rosamund's Well is named after Rosamund Clifford, reputedly one of the great beauties of the 12th Century who inspired poems, stories and paintings.

Henry II's royal manor at Woodstock was near to where to the palace is today.  A palace spokeswoman said the well had become "somewhat overgrown and at risk of becoming damaged".

According to the 17th Century poem Fair Rosamond, Henry II built a labyrinthine bower at his Woodstock manor to hide Rosamund from Queen Eleanor.

More: BBC News - 'Fair Rosamund' well to be restored at Blenheim Palace

Cindy
Always be yourself.  Unless you can be a unicorn.  Then always be a unicorn.

Curryong

^^Why didn't Henry just install his girlfriend in some other manor house?

cinrit

I used to know the story of Rosamund, but I don't remember it now.  I think Henry actually kept moving her from place to place, because Eleanor kept finding her.  Eleanor was quite a force to be reckoned with!

Cindy
Always be yourself.  Unless you can be a unicorn.  Then always be a unicorn.

Curryong

^^Yes, a very determined older woman, who finally got the better of poor Rosamund, apparently. It's many years since I read it too, but didn't Eleanor track her to her bower in the middle of a maze and then have her poisoned?


cinrit

^^ Yep, I think you're right, Curryong.  I'd quite forgotten that.  Or maybe I forced myself to forget that.

Cindy
Always be yourself.  Unless you can be a unicorn.  Then always be a unicorn.

amabel

Sorry but not true.  Rosamund Died of consumption.. Eleanor was kept prisoner by Henry for many years.

Curryong

There are many myths and legends connected with the 'Fair Rosamund' (Rosamund de Clifford.) She died in a nunnery. The story of Eleanor following her to her bower by a silken thread left in the maze and telling her she must taken poison is a well-known legend.

cinrit

^^ The poisoning is the only one I remember.  But I have to confess I wasn't interested enough in that period to do more than accept the myth without question.

Cindy
Always be yourself.  Unless you can be a unicorn.  Then always be a unicorn.

amabel

There's a lot of fiction about the period, but I admit Im no expert on medieval...but all the drama of Eleanor versus Henry, attracts novelists

Limabeany

Henry ? and the Fair Rosamund: a most mysterious mistress

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Rosamund was born sometime before 1150, one of the six children born to Walter de Clifford and his wife, Margaret. Her father was one of the marcher lords, a knightly title which denoted that he was entrusted by the king to guard extensive tracts of land on the Welsh/English border.

At that time Wales was a wild country in constant rebellion against the English king as it struggled to free itself from beneath the heel of the armoured boot of the English. The king at this time was Henry Ⅱ, a man of limitless energy and fiery nature.

Rosamund herself grew up to have the necessary requisite for all mistresses everywhere, great beauty and seems to have attracted two famous epithets, The Fair Rosamund and Rosa Mundi, Latin for Rose of the World.

Gardeners will recognise that this is also the name of a rose which has a delicate pink and white appearance but it is unknown whether or not this old rose was contemporary with Rosamund. It is tantalising to think that it may have been and that someone, perhaps Henry, teasingly nicknamed her after the rose as she blushed before him.

Little is known of what sort of person Rosamund was and because of this artists and poets have usually shown her as the victim in her long term relationship with Henry and her unenviable position as 'the other woman' to his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine.
"You don't have to be pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'." Diana Vreeland.

Limabeany

#10
The Woman in Bower | Fair Rosamond vs Eleanor of Aquitaine | Sexual Fables

Quote
Once upon a time, a young maid named Fair Rosamond was murdered by jealous Queen Eleanor in the royal palace of Woodstock, near Oxford.  Despite the best efforts of King Henry II to keep his women apart, evidently he had failed.  The question that remains: who was the villain of the piece?

King Henry had first taken a liking to Rosamond, the daughter of one of his knights, nine years earlier.  Her father, Walter de Clifford, had a castle on the Welsh border and Henry probably met her there during one of his occasional wars of pacification of the Welsh, who quite unreasonably wanted to remain free.

Fair Rosamond of course was very beautiful, an English rose, though her name means "Rose of the World" in Latin.  Henry was drawn to her softer form of femininity, so different from his wife's, for Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine was the kind of woman who made men behave respectfully whenever she was around.  An "overbearing, vindictive woman," wrote Jane Austen biographer Elizabeth Jenkins in 1955, taking sides with Rosamond in her book Ten Exciting Women, depicting Eleanor as the kind of woman that strong men like Henry run away from.  Katherine Hepburn was the perfect choice to play her in the Freudian-inspired film The Lion in Winter (1968) about their later years together, as was Glenn Close in the 2004 remake.

In Rosamond's town of Bredelais, the peasants and ordinary working people had ways of courting so that couples had a chance of finding out whether they could get along together.  Things seemed to work a little differently among royals.  Rosamond knew Henry was a womanizer long before his arrival.  Indeed it was common knowledge that he had mistresses all over the kingdom.  This pained her father deeply for he saw the way the King looked at his daughter and he knew where it would lead.  He knew other fathers had kept their daughters out of the King's sight; should he have done the same?  Yet it appears the King genuinely did fall in love with Rosamond and she too could find it in her heart to love him, though she was frightened she was sinning against God.  The predicament aroused intense emotions in her – he was the King, after all.  She tried not to commit adultery in her heart because adultery was a mortal sin, but women are the weaker sex, just as prone to sin as the men, if not more so.  She also knew she did not have to look further than the Queen to see who was encouraging the immoral behavior that was all around her, for everyone knew the Queen had her own affairs.
"You don't have to be pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'." Diana Vreeland.