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Woodstock; or, the Cavalier by Sir Walter Scott
page 33 of 685 (04%)
place and ruins show it to have been a house and of one pile, perhaps of
strength, according to the fashion of those times, and probably was
fitted with secret places of recess, and avenues to hide or convey away
such persons as were not willing to be found if narrowly sought after.
About the midst of the place ariseth a spring, called at present
Rosamond's Well; it is but shallow, and shows to have been paved and
walled about, likely contrived for the use of them within the house,
when it should be of danger to go out.

A quarter of a mile distant from the King's house, is seated Woodstook
town, new and old. This new Woodstock did arise by some buildings which
Henry the Second gave leave to be erected, (as received by tradition,)
at the suite of the Lady Rosamond, for the use of out-servants upon the
wastes of the manner of Bladon, where is the mother church; this is a
hamlet belonging to it, though encreased to a market town by the
advantage of the Court residing sometime near, which of late years they
have been sensible of the want of; this town was made a corporation in
the 11th year of Henry the Sixth, by charter, with power to send two
burgesses to parliament or not, as they will themselves.

Old Woodstock is seated on the west side of the brook, named Glyme,
which also runneth through the park; the town consists not of above four
or five houses, but it is to be conceived that it hath been much larger,
(but very anciently so,) for in some old law historians there is mention
of the assize at Woodstock, for a law made in a Micelgemote (the name of
Parliaments before the coming of the Norman) in the days of King
Ethelred.

And in like manner, that thereabout was a king's house, if not in the
same place where Henry the First built the late standing pile before
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