ROWENA,
According to Nennias, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and others, Rowena was the daughter of the Jutish Captain Hengist. who, summoned by the British king to assist him against his foes, found this country so much to his liking, that he resolved to establish himself in is and make it his future home. As Hengist was at this time but thirty years of age, his daughter. must have been quite young; that she was beautiful we may infer from her having won the affections, or, at least, captivated the fancy of Vortigern, who had previously married a British lady of royal birth, and had four children by her. To make way for the fair Saxon he divorced her who was much beloved by the people, and so entailed upon himself a series of troubles which embittered all his after life. Vortigern's first wife was a Christian; Rowena was of course a pagan, and she stipulated before marriage for liberty to exercise her own religion; hence came temples and idol worship, sacrifices and divinations, and a revival of old abominations in the island. And hence, too, came crimes out of number, committed by the British king. One of these was the slaughter of the good Bishop of London, Vodemas, who had the boldness to remonstrate with Vortigern on his wickedness, in dismissing his lawful wife, and marrying an enemy to the Christian faith.
When the monarch was excommunicated by the synod of bishops, for taking to his bed a heathen princess, and eventually deposed for his crimes and follies, he was sent a prisoner into Wales, and Rowena was confined in the Tower of London, where she gave birth to a son, and spent some of the last years of her live. She seems to have preserved great equanimity under this reverse, and to have shewn all through her many difficulties, a firm determination to adhere to the fortunes of her own family, which owed its aggrandizement mainly to her. She is said to have been a skilful poisoner, and to have exercised her craft among others upon her step-son Vortimer, who, on his father's deposition, succeeded to the throne.
There is so much of fiction mixed up with her history, that one scarcely knows how much of it to believe. Some are inclined to regard her as altogether a mythological person, but we cannot do this. Like a star, bright although baneful, she shines out from a dark period of British history, and we must give her a place a our records of remarkable women.