branches.

WOODSTOCK AND BLENHEIM.

[Illustration: CHAUCER'S HOUSE.]

Not far away from Oxford is the manor of Woodstock, where "Fair
Rosamond's Bower" was built by King Henry II. This manor was an early
residence of the kings of England, and Henry I. built a palace there,
adding to it a vast park. Of this palace not a sign is now to be seen,
but two sycamores have been planted to mark the spot. The poet Chaucer
lived at Woodstock, and is supposed to have taken much of the
descriptive scenery of his _Dream_ from the park. Edward the Black
Prince, son of Edward III., was born at Woodstock. Henry VII. enlarged
the palace, and put his name upon the principal gate; and this
gate-house was one of the prisons of the princess Elizabeth, where she
was detained by her sister, Queen Mary. Elizabeth is said to have
written with charcoal on a window-shutter of her apartment, in 1555, a
brief poem lamenting her imprisonment. Her room had an arched roof
formed of carved Irish oak and colored with blue and gold, and it was
preserved until taken down by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. In the
Civil War the palace was besieged, and after surrender, unlike most
similar structures, escaped demolition. Cromwell allotted it to three
persons, two of whom pulled down their portions for the sake of the
stone. Charles II. appointed the Earl of Rochester gentleman of the
bedchamber and comptroller of Woodstock Park, and it is said that he
here scribbled upon the door of the bedchamber of the king the
well-known mock epitaph:

"Here lies our sovereign lord, the king.
Whose word no man relies on;
He never says a foolish thing,
Nor ever does a wise one."

In Queen Anne's reign Woodstock was granted to John Churchill, Duke of
Marlborough, for his eminent military services. The condition of the
grant, which is still scrupulously performed, was that on August 2d in
every year he and his heirs should present to the reigning monarch at
Windsor Castle one stand of colors, with three fleurs-de-lis painted
thereon. The estate was named Blenheim, after the little village on the
Danube which was the scene of his greatest victory on August 2, 1704.
Ten years later, the duchess Sarah took down the remains of the old
palace of Woodstock, and Scott has woven its history into one of his
later novels. Hardly any trace remains of old Woodstock, and the only
ruin of interest is a curious chimney-shaft of the fourteenth century,
which a probably i