Rosamund's remains, however, were not allowed to occupy their sepulchre in peace. Fourteen years after their solemn commission to this sacred place of interment, Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, in a visitation of his diocese, came to Godstow. After he had entered the church, and performed his devotions, he observed the tomb occupying its conspicuous position before the high altar, adorned as already described, and forthwith asked whose it was. On being informed that it was the grave of Rosamund, whom Henry, the late king, had so dearly loved, and for whose sake he had greatly enriched this hitherto small and indigent house, and had given lands for the sustentation of the tomb and the maintenance of the lights, he imperatively commanded the nuns to take her out of the church, and to bury her with other common people, as the connexion between her and the King had been base; and to the end that the Christian religion might not be vilified, but that other women might thus be deterred from similar evil ways. In obedience to the bishop's mandate the tomb was removed from the church, and erected in the chapter-house. It bore the following epitaph, containing the obvious play upon the lady's name, and declaratory of the unhappy contrast which death had effected:-- "Hic jacet in tumba Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda; Non redolet, sed olet, quæ redolere solet." This tomb remained, an object of interest and respect, until the dissolution of the house. It was then destroyed, and a stone was discovered within it, bearing the simple inscription, "TUMBA ROSAMUNDÆ." The bones were found undecayed, and on the opening of the leaden coffin which contained them, "there was a very swete smell came out of it." Another eye-witness described it as having "enterchangeable weavings drawn out and decked with roses red and green, and the picture of the cup out of which she drank the poyson given her by the Queen, carved in stone." A stone coffin, said to be that of Rosamund, was still to be seen at Godstow when Hearne wrote his "Account of some Antiquities in and about Oxford," but this was regarded by him as a "fiction of the vulgar."[63]