Rosamond (mistress of Henry II)

Rosamond (Rosamond Clifford), d. 1176, mistress of Henry II of England. She was not openly acknowledged by the king until 1174, after he had imprisoned his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine . On Rosamond's death soon afterward she was buried in Godstow Abbey, but her remains were removed to the chapter house after Henry's death. Many stories were written about Rosamond by later chroniclers, the best-known involving variations on a tragic death. She was supposedly murdered at Woodstock by Eleanor of Aquitaine, either by poison, stabbing, beheading, or being bled to death in her bath.

Rosamond, Fair, Rosamond Clifford (d. ?1176), probably mistress of Henry II in 1174. A legend transmitted by Stow following Higden declares that Henry kept her in a maze-like house in Woodstock where only he could find her, but the queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, traced her whereabouts and ‘so dealt with her that she lived not long after’. The story is told in a ballad by Deloney included in Percy's Reliques; Daniel published in 1592 ‘The Complaint of Rosamond’, a poem in rhyme-royal; and Addison wrote an opera, Rosamond, in 1707.