Woodstock

Woodstock, a market-town of Oxfordshire, on the Glyme, 8 miles NNW. of Oxford. It was a royal manor from Saxon times until 1705, when it was granted to the Duke of Marlborough, whose seat, Blenheim Park (q.v.), is close by. Hence it has many memories, as the birthplace of the Black Prince (though not of Chaucer), as the scene of Becket's first quarrel with Henry (if not of Fair Rosamond's murder), as the place of captivity where Elizabeth wished herself a milkmaid, and for the pranks of its 'merry devil' on the parliamentary commissioners in the old manor house, which was pulled down in 1723. A municipal borough, chartered first by Henry VI., and last in 1886, Woodstock till 1832 returned two members to parliament, and then till 1885 one. It still carries on leather glove-making. Pop. 1628. See E. Marshall's Early History of Woodstock Manor (2 vols. 1873-74).