Robert Southwell

Robert Southwell

:"For the diplomat, see Robert Southwell (diplomat)"

Saint Robert Southwell (c. 1561 – 21 February 1595) was an English Jesuit priest and poet. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, and became a Catholic martyr. He was born at Horsham St. Faith in Norfolk, England.

Early life in England

Southwell, the youngest of eight children, was brought up in a family of Catholic gentry and educated at Douai. Thence he moved to Paris, where he was placed under a Jesuit priest, Thomas Darbyshire. In 1580 he joined the Society of Jesus after a two-year novitiate passed mostly at Tournai. In spite of his youth, he was made prefect of studies in the Venerable English College at Rome and was ordained priest in 1584.

It was in that year that an act was passed forbidding any English-born subject of Queen Elizabeth, who had entered into priests' orders in the Roman Catholic Church since her accession, to remain in England longer than forty days on pain of death. But Southwell, at his own request, was sent to England in 1586 as a Jesuit missionary with Henry Garnett. He went from one Catholic family to another, administering the rites of his Church, and in 1589 became domestic chaplain to Ann Howard, whose husband, the first earl of Arundel, was in prison convicted of treason. It was to him that Southwell addressed his "Epistle of Comfort". This and other of his religious tracts, "A Short Rule of Good Life", "Triumphs over Death", "Mary Magdalen's Tears" and a "Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth", were widely circulated in manuscript. That they found favor outside Catholic circles is proved by Thomas Nashe's imitation of "Mary Magdalen's Tears" in "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem".

Arrest and imprisonment

After six years of successful labor, Southwell was arrested. He was in the habit of visiting the house of Richard Bellamy, who lived near Harrow and was under suspicion on account of his connection with Jerome Bellamy, who had been executed for sharing in Anthony Babington's plot. One of the daughters, Anne Bellamy, was arrested and imprisoned in the gatehouse of Holborn. She revealed Southwell's movements to Richard Topcliffe, who immediately arrested him.

He was imprisoned at first in Topcliffe's house, where he was repeatedly put to the torture in the vain hope of extracting evidence about other priests. He was transferred to the gatehouse at Westminster, and when he was brought up for examination after a month his clothes were covered with vermin. So abominable was his treatment that his father petitioned Elizabeth that he might either be brought to trial and put to death, if found guilty, or removed in any case from that filthy hole. Southwell was then lodged in the Tower of London, and allowed clothes and a bible and the works of St Bernard. His imprisonment lasted for 3 years, during which period he was tortured on ten occasions.

Trial and execution

In 1595 the Privy Council passed a resolution for Southwell's prosecution on the charges of treason. He was removed from the Tower to Newgate prison, where he was put into a hole called Limbo.

A few days later, Southwell appeared before the Lord Chief Justice, John Popham, at the bar of the King's Bench. Popham made a speech against Jesuits and seminary priests. Southwell was indicted before the jury as a traitor under the statutes prohibiting the presence within the kingdom of priests ordained by Rome. Southwell admitted the facts but denied that he had "entertained any designs or plots against the queen or kingdom." His only purpose, he said, in returning to England had been to administer the sacraments according to the rite of the Catholic Church to such as desired them. When asked to enter a plea, he declared himself "not guilty of any treason whatsoever," objecting to a jury being made responsible for his death but allowing that he would be tried by God and country.

As the evidence was pressed, Southwell stated that he was the same age as "our Saviour." He was immediately reproved by Topcliffe for insupportable pride in making the comparison, but he said in response that he considered himself "a worm of the earth." After a brief recess, the jury returned with the predictable guilty verdict. The sentence of death was pronounced — to be hanged, drawn and quartered. He was returned through the city streets to Newgate.

On the next day, February 20, 1595, Southwell was sent to Tyburn. Execution of sentence on a notorious highwayman had been appointed for the same time, but at a different place — perhaps to draw the crowds away — and yet many came to witness Southwell's death. Having been dragged through the streets on a sled, he stood in the cart beneath the gibbet and made the sign of the cross with his pinioned hands before reciting a Bible passage from "Romans xiv." The sheriff made to interrupt him; but he was allowed to address the people at some length, confessing that he was a Jesuit priest and praying for the salvation of Queen and country. As the cart was drawn away, he commended his soul to God with the words of the psalm "in manus tuas." He hung in the noose for a brief time, making the sign of the cross as best he could. As the executioner made to cut him down, in preparation for bowelling him while still alive, Lord Mountjoy and some other onlookers tugged at his legs to hasten his death. His lifeless body was then bowelled and quartered. As his severed head was displayed to the crowd, no one shouted the traditional "Traitor!"

Legacy

There is little doubt that much of Southwell's poetry, none of which was published during his lifetime, was written in prison. "St Peter's Complaint" with other poems was published in April 1595, without the author's name, and was reprinted thirteen times during the next forty years. A supplementary volume entitled "Maeoniae" appeared later in 1595; and "A Foure fould Meditation of the foure last things" in 1606.

This, which is not included in A. B. Grosart's reprint (1872) in the "Fuller Worthies Library", was published by Charles Edmonds in his "Isham Reprints" (1895). "A Hundred Meditations of the Love of God", in prose, was first printed from a manuscript at Stonyhurst College in 1873. This last work was believed to be written by Southwell, but in fact it is his translation from an Italian version of a Spanish document, "Meditaciones devotissimas amor Dios", written by Fray Diego de Estella and published in Salamanca in 1576.

Southwell's poetry is euphuistic in manner. His frequent use of antithesis and paradox, the varied and fanciful imagery by which he realizes religious emotion, though they are indeed in accordance with the poetical conventions of his time, are also the unconstrained expression of an ardent and concentrated imagination. Ben Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that he would willingly have destroyed many of his own poems to be able to claim as his own Southwell's "Burning Babe", an extreme but beautiful example of his fantastic treatment of sacred subjects.

Southwell's poetry is not, however, all characterized by this elaboration. Immediately preceding that piece in his collected works is a carol written in terms of the utmost simplicity. Perhaps the poem with the greatest exposure today is an excerpt from "New Heaven, New War," appearing as "This Little Babe" in Benjamin Britten's 1942 choral suite "A Ceremony of Carols."

Southwell's poems were edited by William Barclay Turnbull (1811–1863) in 1856. A memoir of him was drawn up soon after his death.

Much of the material was incorporated by Bishop Challoner in his "Memoir of Missionary Priests "(1741), and the manuscript is now in the Public Record Office in Brussels. See also Alexis Possoz, "Vie du Pre R. Southwell" (1866); and a life in Henry Foley's "Records of the English Province of the Society of JesusH historic facts illustrative of the labors and sufferings of its members in the 16th and 17th centuries", 1877 (i. 301387). Foley's narrative includes copies of the most important documents connected with his trial, and gives full information on the original sources.

Southwell was beatified in 1929 and canonized by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales on 25 October 1970.

In the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, Southwell and his companion and associate Henry Garnet were noted for their allegiance to the Doctrine of mental reservation, a controversial ethical concept of the period.

Southwell is also the patron saint of Southwell House, a house in the prestigious London Oratory School in Fulham, London. His relics, however, can be venerated at Westminster Cathedral in London under an effigy of the saint dressed in priestly garments typical of the 16th century.

Quotes

*

"The Chief Justice asked how old he was, seeming to scorn his youth. He answered that he was near about the age of our Saviour, Who lived upon the earth thirty-three years; and he himself was as he thought near about thirty-four years. Hereat Topcliffe seemed to make great acclamation, saying that he compared himself to Christ. Mr. Southwell answered, 'No he was a humble worm created by Christ.' 'Yes,' said Topcliffe, 'you are Christ's fellow.'"
--Father Henry Garnet, "Account of the Trial of Robert Southwell." Quoted in Caraman's "The Other Face," page 230.

* Southwell: I am decayed in memory with long and close imprisonment, and I have been tortured ten times. I had rather have endured ten executions. I speak not this for myself, but for others; that they may not be handled so inhumanely, to drive men to desperation, if it were possible.

Topcliffe: If he were racked, let me die for it.

Southwell: No; but it was as evil a torture, or late device.

Topcliffe: I did but set him against a wall.

Southwell: Thou art a bad man.

Topcliffe: I would blow you all to dust if I could.

Southwell: What, all?

Topcliffe: Ay, all.

Southwell: What, soul and body too? [http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/players/player40.html (At his Trial)]

"Not where I breath, but where I love, I live" on the outside of The DeNaples Center at the Jesuit University of Scranton.

References

*Bishop Challoner, "Memoirs of Missionary Priests and other Catholics of both sexes that have Suffered Death in England on Religious Accounts from the year 1577 to 1684" (Manchester, 1803) vol. I, p. 175ff.
*1911

Further reading

*Ceri Sullivan, "Dismembered Rhetoric. English Recusant Writing, 1580-1603" (Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1995), ISBN 0838635776

External links

* [http://www.bartleby.com/214/0701.html The Cambridge History of English and American Literature]
* [http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/southbib.htm The Poems of Robert Southwell]

Known Relatives

Antony Southwell (14)Christian Southwell (16)Laura Southwell (22)David Southwell (54)Ceril Southwell (??)


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