Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/683

 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.

ROWSON, SUSANNAH, the daughter of Lieutenant Haswell, of the British navy, who was sent to New England in 1769, when his daughter was about seven years old. On the breaking out of the revolution. Lieutenant Haswell returned to London with his family, where, in 1786, Miss Haswell was married to William Rowson. While in this country she published several novels, of which the only one that is now known is the one entitled "Charlotte Temple." Mrs. Rowson returned to the United States in 1793, and was engaged as an actress in the theatres of Boston and Philadelphia for the next three years; and was also diligently occupied with her literary pursuits. In 1797, she opened a school for girls in Boston, which succeeded extremely well. She died in that city in 1824. She was considered a poetess as well as a novelist, though but few of her poems are now known. Her writings are very voluminous.

ROZEE, MADEMOISELLE. extraordinary lady was born at Leyden in 1682. Konbraken says he cannot tell how she managed her work, nor with what