stone, then upwards of timber, plain, within which was a chest of iron, containing the bones of Thomas Becket, skull and all, with the wound of his death, and the piece cut out of his skull laid in the wound. The timber work of this shrine, on the outside, was covered with plates of gold, damasked with gold wire, which ground of gold was again covered with jewels, gold, as rings, ten or twelve cramped with gold-wire into the said ground of gold, many of these rings having stones in them, brooches, images, angels, precious stones, and great pearls." The contents of the shrine were in accordance with the outward display. Erasmus, who obtained a glimpse of the treasures a little before the Reformation, says that, under a coffin of wood, enclosing another of gold, which was drawn at by ropes and pulleys, he beheld an amount of riches the value of which he could not estimate. Gold was the meanest thing visible; the whole glittered with the rarest and most precious gems, which were generally of extraordinary size, and some larger than the egg of a goose. When Henry VIII. seized upon the whole, two great chests were filled, each requiring six or seven men to move it. In strict keeping with the character of the brutal despot was his war with the dead as well as with the living, when he ordered the remains of Becket to be burned, and the ashes scattered to the winds. The shrine there has disappeared with all its contents, but a more touching memorial than either remains behind-the hallowed pavement, worn away by countless knees of worshippers from every Christian land.

Old England, vol. i., p. 153.

QUEEN ELEANORA'S AMAZON GUARD. Touched with the eloquence of St. Bernard, who preached the Crusade at Vezalai, in Burgundy, Queen Eleanora vowed to accompany her lord (Louis VII. of France),* to the Holy Land, and lead the forces of the south to the relief of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. Receiving the cross from St. Bernard, she directly put on the dress of an Amazon; and her ladies, all actuated by the same frenzy, mounted on horseback, and forming a lightly armed squadron, surrounded the queen when she appeared in public, calling themselves Queen Eleanora's body guard. They practised Amazonian exercises, and performed a thousand follies in public to animate their zeal as practical crusaders. By the suggestion of their young queen, this band of mad women sent their useless distaffs as presents to all the knights and nobles who had the good sense to keep out of the crusading expedition. This ingenious taunt had the effect of shaming many wise men out of their better resolutions; and to such a degree was this mania of the crusade carried, that, as St. Bernard himself owns, whole villages were deserted by their male inhabitants, and the land left to

* She was divorced from Louis the 18th of March, 1152, and married to Henry II., of England (then Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou), six weeks afterwards.

be tilled by women and children. It was on the Whit-Sunday of 1147, that all matters being ready for marching to the south of France, Louis VII. received the oriflamme from the hands of the pope himself, at the Abbey St. Denis, and set forward after the Whit holidays on his ill-advised expedition. Such fellow-soldiers as Queen Eleanora and her Amazons would have been quite sufficient to disconcert the plans, and impede the projects of Hannibal himself; and though King Louis conducted himself with great ability and courage in his difficult enterprise, no prudence could counteract the misfortune of being encumbered with an army of fantastic women. The freaks of Queen Eleanora and her female warriors were the cause of all the misfortunes which befel King Louis and his army, especially in the defeat at Laodicea. The king had sent forward the queen and her ladies, escorted by his choicest troops, under the guard of Count Maurienne. He charged them to choose for their camp the arid but commanding ground, which gave them a view over the defiles of the valley of Laodicea.

While the detachment was encamping, he, at the distance of five miles, brought up the rear and baggage, ever and anon turning to battle bravely with the skirmishing Arab cavalry, who were harassing his march. Queen Eleanora acted in direct opposition to his rational directions. She insisted on her detachment of the army halting in a lovely romantic valley, full of verdant grass and gushing fountains. The king was encumbered by the immense baggage which William of Tyre declares the female warriors of Queen Eleanora persisted in retaining in the camp at all risks. Darkness began to fall as the King of France approached the entrance to the valley; and, to his consternation, he found the heights above it unoccupied by the advanced body of his troops Neither the queen nor her forces being encamped there, he was forced to enter the valley in search of her, and was soon attacked from the heights by swarms of Arabs, who engaged him in the passes among the rocks. At length, by efforts of personal heroism, he succeeded in placing himself between the detachment of his ladies and the Saracens. Seven thousand of the flower of French chivalry paid with their lives the penalty of their queen's inexperience in warlike tactics. All the provision was cut off; the baggage, containing the fine array of the lady warriors, which had proved such an incumbrance to the king, was plundered by the Arabs and Saracens, and the whole army was reduced to the greatest distress. Agnes Strickland's Queens, vol. i., p. 246.

FAIR ROSAMOND.

Rosamond, the fayre daughter of Walter Lord Clifford, concubine to Henry II. (poisoned by Queen Eleanor, as some have thought), dyed at Woodstock, Anno Dom. 1177, where King Henry had made for her a house of wonderful working, so that no man or woman might come to her, but he that was instructed by the king; or such as were right secret with him touching the matter.

This house, after some, was named Labyrinthus, or Dedalus worke, which was wrought like a knot in a garden, called a maze, consisting of vaults under ground (arched and walled with brick and stone), but it was commonly said, that lastly the queene came to her by a clue of thridde, or silke, and so dealt with her, that she lived not long after;* but when she was dead, she was buried at Godstow, in an house of Nunnes, beside Oxford, with these verses upon her tombe:

"Hic jacet in tumba, Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda;
Non redolet, sed olet, quæ redolere solet."
Stowe's Annals, Ed. 1631,

p.

154.

"This tomb doth here enclose, the world's most beauteous rose, Rose passing sweet ere while now naught but odour vile."

Speed.

How the queen gained admittance into Rosamond's bower is differently related; Hollingshead speaks of it as the common report of the people, that the queene found hir out by a silken thridde, which the kinge had drawne after him out of hir chamber with his foote, and dealt with her in such sharpe and cruell wise that she lived not long after. Brompton says, that one day Queen Eleanor saw the king walking in the plaisance of Woodstock, with the end of a ball of floss silk attached to his spur; coming near him unperceived, she took up the ball, and the king walking on, the silk unwound, and thus the queen traced him to a thicket in the labyrinth or maze of the park, where he disappeared. She kept the matter a secret, often revolving in her own mind in what company he could meet with balls of silk. Soon after the king left Woodstock for a distant journey; then Queen Eleanor, bearing her discovery in mind, searched the thicket in the park, and discovered a low door cunningly concealed; this door she forced, and found it was the entrance to a winding subterranean path, which led out at a distance to a sylvan lodge in the most retired part of the adjacent forest.†

* It is observable, that none of the old writers attribute Rosamond's death to poison (Stowe merely mentions it as a slight conjecture); they only give us to understand that the queen treated her harshly; with furious menaces and sharp expostulations, we may suppose, but used neither dagger nor bowl. Brompton says, "she lived with Henry a long time after he had imprisoned Eleanor ;" and Carte, in his History of England, vol. i., p. 659, goes far to prove that Rosamond was not poisoned by the queen (which popular legend was based on no other authority than an old ballad); but, that through grief at the defection of her royal admirer, she retired from the world, and became a nun at Godstow. where she lived twenty years.

† As to the labyrinth or maze at Woodstock, it most likely existed before the -time of Rosamond, and remained after her death, since all pleasances or gardens in the middle age were contrived with this adjunct. Traces of them exist to this day, in the names of places near defunct royal palaces; witness "Maze-hill," at Greenwich (near the site of the maze or labyrinth of Greenwich Palace); and the maze in Southwark, once part of the garden of the Princess Mary Tudor's palace. We have evidence that Edward III. (between whom and the death of Rosamond little more than a century intervened), familiarly called a structure pertaining to

On the other hand, in Speed's annals, we are told that the jealous queene found her out by a clewe of silke, fallen from Rosamond's lappe, as she sate taking ayre, and suddenly fleeing from the sight of the searcher, the ende of the clewe still unwinding remained behinde; which the queene followed, till she found what she sought, and upon Rosamond so vented her spleene, as the ladie lived not after. The following popular ballad (which was first published in Strange Histories, or Songs and Sonnets of Kinges, Princes, Dukes, Lordes, Ladyes, Knights, Gentlemen, &c., by Thomas Delone, London, 1612, 4to., and here given with emendations from four ancient copies in black letter, two of them in the Pepy's library), with more ingenuity, and probably as much truth, tell us the clue was gained by surprise, from the knight who was left to guard the bower:-

When as King Henry rulde this land
The second of that name,
Besides the queene, he dearly lovde
A faire and comely dame.

Most perlesse was her beautye found,
Her favour, and her face;

A sweeter creature in this worlde
Could never prince embrace.

Her crisped lockes like threads of golde
Appeared to each man's sight;
Her sparkling eyes, like Orient pearles,
Did cast a heavenlye light.

The blood within her crystal cheeks
Did such a colour drive,
As though the lillye and the rose
For mastership did strive.
Yea Rosamonde, fair Rosamonde,
Her name was called so,
To whom our queene dame Ellinor,
Was known a deadlye foe.
The King, therefore, for her defence,
Against the furious queene,
At Woodstocke builded such a bower,
The like was never seene.

Most curiously that bower was built
Of stone and timber strong,
An hundred and fifty doors
Did to this bower belong.

And they so cunningly contriv'd
With turnings round about,
That none but with a clue of thread,
Could enter in or out.

And for his love and laydes sake,

That was so fair and brighte,
The keeping of this bower he gave
Unto a valiante knighte.

But fortune, that doth often frowne
Where she before did smile,
The kinges delighte and laydes joy
Full soon she did beguile.

For why the kinges ungracious sonne,
Whom he did high advance,
Against his father raised warres
Within the realme of France.
But yet before our comelye King
The English land forsooke,
Of Rosamonde, his ladye faire

His farewell thus he tooke:

"My Rosamonde, my only Rose,
That pleasest best my eye,
The fairest flower in all the world
To feed my fantasye.

"The flower of mine affected heart,
Whose sweetness doth excelle,
My Royal Rose, a thousand times
I bid thee nowe farewelle!

Woodstock-palace, "Rosamond Chamber," the locality of which he minutely describes in a letter preserved in the Fœdera, vol. iv., p. 629. In this document he directs William de Montacute, "to order various repairs at his manor of Woodstock; and that the house beyond the gate in the new wall be built again, and that same chamber, called Rosamond's chamber, be restored as before, and crystal plates, and marble, and lead to be provided for it." Here is an indisputable proof that there was a structure called Rosamond's chamber, distinct from Woodstockpalace, yet belonging to its domain, being a building situated beyond the park wall. Edward III. passed the first years of his marriage principally at Woodstock, therefore he well knew the localities, which will agree with the old chroniclers, if we suppose Rosamond's residence was approached by a tunnel under the park wall. Agnes Strickland's Queen's, vol. i., p. 263.

And with sweet baths refresh your grace, And pardon of the queene she crav'd