Woodstock is a place full of history and in a delightful position, with woods still surrounding it as in the days of yore, when it was the abode of kings and a royal residence.  A witenagemot, or supreme council, was held here by King Ethelred in the year 866, and Alfred the Great pursued his literary work here by translating the Consolations of Boethius, and in the grounds he had a deer-fold.  In Domesday Book it is described as a royal forest, and Henry I had an enclosure made in the park for lions and other wild beasts, which he surrounded by a very high wall, in which menagerie he placed the first porcupine ever seen in England, presented to him by William de Montpellier.  The country people at that time imagined that the quills of the porcupine were weapons which the animal could shoot at those who hunted it.  Henry II resided at the palace with the lady of his love, the Fair Rosamond.  She was the second daughter of Walter, Lord de Clifford, who built his castle on a cliff overlooking a ford on the River Wye at Clifford in Herefordshire, and his daughter Rosa-mundi (the rose of the world) was born there.  She had a local lover whom she discarded when Prince Henry appeared on the scene, and finally Henry took her away to Woodstock, where he built magnificent apartments for her and her children, the entrance to which was through an intricate maze in the castle grounds.  The rear of the buildings adjoined the park, so that Rosamond and her children could pass out at the back into the park and woods without being perceived from the castle.  Queen Eleanor was naturally jealous when she heard that she had been superseded in the king’s affections, and it was said she tried all available means to discover the whereabouts of the Fair Rosamond, but without success, until she contrived to fasten a thread of silk to one of the king’s spurs, which she afterwards followed in the maze in the castle grounds to the point where it had broken off at the secret entrance.  She waited for her opportunity, and when the king was away she had the trap-door forced open, and, taking a large bowl of poison in one hand and a sharp dagger in the other, found Rosamond near a well in the park and commanded her to end her life either with one or the other.  Rosamond took the poison, “and soe shee dyed,” and the well ever since has been known as Fair Rosamond’s Well; we afterwards found another well of the same name in Shropshire.  She had two sons, one of whom became the Earl of Salisbury and the other Archbishop of York; an old ballad runs:—­

  But nothing could this furious queen
    Therewith appeased bee: 
  The cup of deadlye poyson strong. 
    As she knelt on her knee,

  She gave this comlye dame to drink,
    Who took it in her hand;
  And from her bended knee arose
    And on her feet did stand.

  And casting up her eyes to heaven,
    She did for mercy calle;
  And drinking up the poyson strong. 
    Her life she lost with-alle.