page_title: Rosamund Clifford
section_title: Death and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Rosamund Clifford / Death and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Ruin of Godstow Abbey, Lower Wolvercote, Oxfordshire
context_page_description: Rosamund Clifford, often called "The Fair Rosamund" or the "Rose of the World", was famed for her beauty and was a mistress of King Henry II of England, famous in English folklore.
context_section_description: Her death was remembered at Hereford Cathedral on 6 July, the same day as that of the king 13 years later. Henry and the Clifford family paid for her tomb at Godstow in the choir of the monastery 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 laden with flowers and candles. The bishop ordered her remains removed from the church: instead, she was to be buried outside "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 traveller 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.")
caption: Godstow Abbey ruins
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