THE XXVIJ. CHAPTER.
[Sidenote: CONSTANTIUS. _Matth. West._ saith 302. 289.]
Constantius a senatour of Rome began to reigne ouer the Britains,
in the yeere of our Lord 289, as our histories report. This
Constantius (as before ye haue heard) had to wife Helen the
daughter of the foresaid king Coel, of whome he begat a sonne named
Constantinus, which after was emperour, and for his woorthie dooings
surnamed Constantine the great. S. Ambrose following the common
[Sidenote: _Orosius. Beda_.]
report, writeth that this Helen was a maid in an inne: and some
againe write, that she was concubine to Constantius, and not his wife.
[Sidenote: _Cuspinian_.]
But whatsoeuer she was, it appeareth by the writers of the Romane
[Sidenote: _Fabian._]
histories, that Constantius being the daughters sonne of one
Crispus, that was brother to the emperour Claudius, came into
Britaine, and quieted the troubles that were raised by the Britains,
and there (as some write) maried the foresaid Helen, being a woman of
an excellent beautie, whom yet [after] he was constreined to forsake,
and to marrie Theodora the daughter in law of Herculeus Maximianus, by
whome he had six sonnes, and finallie was created emperour, togither
with the said Galerius Maximianus, at what time Dioclesianus and his
fellow Herculeus Maximianus renounced the rule of the empire, and
committed the same vnto them.
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