Fair Rosamond (I)

DESCRIPTION: ""'I have a sister,' young Clifford said, 'A sister no man knows...." "...I would not for ten thousand worlds Have King Henery know her name." But Henry overhears, and writes a letter to her. The ending appears confused
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1826 (Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1)
KEYWORDS: love royalty disguise
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1154-1189 - Reign of Henry II
c. 1176 - Death of Rosamund Clifford
FOUND IN: US(NE) Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 18, "Fair Rosanne"; Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1, pp. 234-235, "Fair Rosamond" (2 texts)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 193-195, "Fair Rosamond, or Rosamond's Downfall" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, ROSACLIF
Roud #3729
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Queen Eleanor's Confession" [Child 156] (subject)
cf. "Rosamund Clifford" (subject)
SAME TUNE:
"When as Queen Anne of Great Renown" (Edward Gregg, _Queen Anne_, 1980 (I use the 2001 Yale English Monarchs paperback edition with a new introduction by the author), p. 275)
NOTES [839 words]: Roud lumps "Fair Rosamond (I)" and "Rosamund Clifford." They are obviously about the same story, but I consider them distinct; the story was famous enough to attract many writers!
Rollins, p. 159, points out two Rosamund ballads mentioned in the Stationer's Register: #1824, "A mournfull ditty of the Lady Rosamond," registered March 13, 1656, and #1825, "A mournfull ditty of the Lady Rosamond," March 1, 1675, but it's not absolutely clear which song is meant.
For the confusing history of Rosamund Clifford and King Henry II, see the notes to Queen Eleanor's Confession" [Child 156]; there is also a small amount of material in "Rosamund Clifford."
It's interesting to note the extreme lustiness attributed to King Henry II here. This seems to be an exaggeration. Henry obviously was not a dutiful husband to Eleanor of Acquitaine, but neither did he set a record for extra-curricular activities. We do have records of illegitimate children as early as the 1150s, and he was charged with having affairs with many women -- including even Alice/Alys, the daughter of the King of France who was betrothed to Henry's son Richard. But the number of illegitimate children he acknowledged seems to have been fairly small.
According to Warren, p. 601, "the great love of his life, Rosamund Clifford, with whom he had lived openly since the great war [of 1173], died about 1176, and although Henry undoubtedly took mistresses after her death there was no one to match her in his affections or threaten to depose Eleanor as his wife." But as Tyerman, p. 218, points out, "Discernable political influence she had none, as Henry recognized by not divorcing Eleanor in 1175."
That Rosamund was the great love of Henry's life is certainly disputed, but the mere fact that it is disputed shows that Henry can't have had too many other affairs. Similarly, the affair with Alice of France was only a rumor (Gillingham, p. 105), substantiated mostly by Richard's later claim that she had slept with his father -- a claim which Richard used to get rid of her, so it is clearly suspect. (Making it even less likely is the fact that poor Alice was said to be unattractive; Barber, p. 227.)
I'm going to suggest that the lust of King Henry arises by confusion with his grandfather Henry I, who had on the order of fifty illegitimate children by nearly the same number of mothers.
Sadly, after Rosamund died, her body was not allowed to rest in peace. Originally buried in Godstow nunnery, once Henry was dead, Bishop Hugh of Lincoln moved from before the alter to an ordinary cemetery on the grounds that "she was a harlot" (Tyerman, p. 218). Boyd, p. 173, reports that he had it inscribed with a verse which he translates
The rose of the world lies here
But not too clean, I fear
Not perfume, but stenches
She now dispenses.
That last line may be related to "Erthe upon Erthe (Earth upon Earth, Earth out of Earth)."
Barber, pp. 66-67,has a good summary of the Rosamund story:
"With Eleanor [of Aquitaine]'s imprisonment in 1173, Henry almost certainly grew unfaithful. Before this, he is reputed to have been passionately in love with the sister of the earl of Clare and with Avice de Stafford, but it is in this year that the most famous of his mistresses makes her appearance: the 'fair Rosamund' of so much literature and legend. One of six children of Walter de Clifford, a knight with lands in Shropshire, she was openly acknowledged as the king's paramour only a little while before her death as a nun at Godstow in 1176, where she is buried. So much is within the bounds of history; but the stories of the maze at Woodstock which Eleanor penetrated in Henry's absence to offer her the choice between poison and the dagger, and of the wondrous casket kept there, are so much embroidery on a slender groundwork of reality. Although she may have lived at Everswell, Henry's pavilion near Woodstock, the chamber at Winchester named after her eighty year later is unlikely to have existed in her day. By them 'camera Rosamunda' had become the euphemism for the royal mistress's quarters. Even the grim epitaph [quoted above]... was borrowed; it really belonged to s sixth century Lombard queen of the same name....
"Yet it was this of all Henry's exploits that caught the imagination of the ballad writers of a later age; Becket was almost forgotten, and a whole series of poems and plays from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century were centered on this passion....
"Thus a later age cast Henry in the part of romantic lover, at as far a remove from reality as could be imagined."
Owen, p. 121, attributes the song of Rosamund Clifford/Fair Rosamund to Thomas Deloney, a sixteenth century weaver and poet, but because there probably were multiple Rosamund songs, I have not listed him as the author. Owen then goes on to devote two dozen pages (pp. 124-148) to various poems, plays, and other non-traditional works about Rosamund. She probably qualifies as the most famous mistress in English history prior to at least the Stuart dynasty. - RBW
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