Rosamund Clifford - Death and Thereafter

Death and Thereafter

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. Her death was remembered at Hereford Cathedral on 6 July, the same day as that of the king.

Henry and the Clifford family paid for her tomb at Godstow in the choir of the convent's church and for an endowment that would ensure care of the tomb 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. Unsurprisingly calling Rosamund a harlot, the bishop ordered her remains removed from the church: instead, she was to be buried outside the church 'with the rest, that the Christian religion may not grow into contempt, and that other women, warned by her example, may abstain from illicit and adulterous intercourse'. Her tomb was moved to the cemetery by the nuns' chapter house, where it could 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.

Paul Hentzner, a German traveler who visited England c.1599 records that her faded tombstone inscription read in part:

... Adorent, Utque tibi detur requies Rosamunda precamur.

"Let them adore ... and we pray that rest be given to you, Rosamund."

Followed by a rhyming epitaph:

Hic jacet in tumba Rosamundi non Rosamunda, Non redolet sed olet, quae redolere solet.

"Here in the tomb lies the rose of the world, not a pure rose; she who used to smell sweet, still smells--but not sweet."

Apollinaire was to use Rosamond as the central character in his poem Rosemonde, taken from the 1913 collection 'Alcools' (citation taken from Garnet Rees 1975 edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's Alcools; The Athlone Press; London)