to Arianism, and to have her re-baptized; but Ingonde resolutely refused to consent. Grosuinda, enraged at her firmness, seized her by the hair, threw her down, stamped upon her, and had her plunged by force into the baptistry. Ingonde, however, at length, by her patience and piety, converted her husband to her own faith, which, when his father heard of it, made him so furious, that he had his son taken prisoner and beheaded. Ingonde fled, but was captured and taken to Sicily, where she died, about 585. She was venerated as a martyr.
INGRIDA,
A nun of the convent of St. Brigitta, in Wadstena, Sweden, who lived in 1498, wrote an epistle to her lover, which is considered the most elegant and correct specimen of the Swedish language of that period, and indeed superior to any that appeared for a long time after This composition, full of eloquence and genuine passion, in which the sentiments of love and mystic devotion are intermingled, places Ingrida by the side of the more celebrated Heloise.
IRENE,
Empress of Constantinople, was an Athenian orphan, distinguished only by her accomplishments, when, in 769, at the age of seventeen, she was married to Leo the Fourth, Emperor of Constantinople. She was banished by her husband on account of her attachment to image worship, of which the Greek church disapproved. On the death of Leo, in 780, she returned to Constantinople, and was associated in the government with her son Constantine the Sixth, then only ten years of age. Artful and cruel, Irene deposed her son in 797, and caused his eyes to be put out, and then reigned alone. On this occasion, she entered Constantinople in state, with a splendid retinue. She made Charlemagne, then Emperor of the West, a proposal of marriage, in order to preserve her Italian dominions from his grasp, and the marriage treaty was actually concluded, when Nicephorus, chancellor of the empire, conspired against her, seized her in her bed, and banished her to a nunnery in the Island of Lesbos. She was here so reduced, as to be forced to earn a scanty subsistance by her distaff, and died in the same year, 802. During her reign she submitted to be tributary to the Saracens. She governed under the direction of two ambitious eunuchs, who were perpetually plotting against each other.
IRETON, BRIDGET,
Eldest daughter of Oliver Cromwell, was baptized at St. John's church, Huntingdon, on the 4th. of August, 1624. She was a gloomy enthusiast, and such a bigoted republican, that she grudged her father his title of Protector. Nevertheless, she is spoken of as a person of great wisdom, "humbled and not exalted by her accession of greatness." January 15th., 1647, she was married, at Norton, to the saintly Henry Ireton, Lord Deputy of Ireland; and after his death to Fleetwood, who was appointed to the same high post. She seems to have cherished as much admiration for her first husband as she entertained contempt for the second. To Fleetwood, however, her strong sense and advice were of the greatest assistance. She died at Stoke Newington, where she was buried, September 5th., 1681.
