Few places have perished so utterly as this long-lost habitation of men, styled at various times “Sekecourt,” “Seuecurde,” and “Sechworth”; for all we shall now discover of it is a farm so named. But Seacourt was for many centuries a considerable place. Not only did it lie directly upon the then highway to the west, but it was the pilgrims’ lodging-place, and for the accommodation of such it is recorded to have possessed no fewer than twenty-four inns. With the successive blows of the dissolution of the monasteries, when pilgrimages ceased out of the land, and then when the road itself was diverted, Seacourt’s doom befel. It subsided into ruin, and became the abode of foxes and wild-fowl; and presently the very stones of it were carted away. The self-satisfied attitude of Binsey folk in summer, and the woe-begone, dreary, flooded-out experiences of the same people in winter are amusingly contrasted in traditional sayings, current in these parts. Thus, in summer, a villager, asked where he lives, is supposed to say, “Binsey; where d’ye think?” but in winter he will reply, disconsolately, “Binsey, Lord help us!” And it needs only a week or so of rain in one of our tearful summers for the low-lying meadows to be flooded, completely islanding the place in the midst of something resembling an inland sea. [Illustration: BINSEY CHURCH.] In modern times the holy well has been found at the west end of Binsey church and restored, as the inscription records: “St. Margaret’s spring, granted, as it is told us, to the prayers of St. Frideswide, long polluted and choked up, was restored to use by T. J. Prout, student of Christ Church, the vicar, in the year of redemption, 1874.” The well may be holy, but the water again in these days looks provocative of typhoid. Between Wytham and Binsey, and directly upon the river, is a very much better known place than either; to wit, Godstow. “Fair Rosamond” and Godstow have employed the morbidly-sentimental pens of uncounted scribblers. It is easy to be either sentimental or morbid, and of the easiest to be morbidly-sentimental over unworthy subjects: hence the exploitation in this wise of “Fair Rosamond.” Godstow Nunnery, it seems, was founded by Edith, an ex-_chère amie_ of Henry the First, and wife of the second Robert D’Oilgi, or D’Oyley, lord of Oxford. The buildings were consecrated with great state by the Bishop of Lincoln in 1138. There is little need here to dwell upon the history of the nunnery, which in general is sufficiently dull; and Godstow is, in fact, interesting only on account of that highly improper person known in romantic history as “Fair Rosamond,” who was educated here. The name of Rosamond, if we may believe Dryden, who, as a poet, is perhaps not to be altogether relied upon as an authority, was really Jane. It might have been worse. However: “Jane Clifford was her name, as books aver, Fair Rosamond was but her _nom de guerre_.”