From: trudie.Miller@cox.net   
      
   February 21st - St. Robert Southwell   
      
   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.   
      
   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 Nash's imitation of Mary Magdalen's Tears   
   in Christ's Tears over Jerusalem.   
      
   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.   
      
   In 1595 the privy council passed a resolution for Southwell's prosecution on   
   charges of treason, and 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, and 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 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", and objected to a jury being   
   made responsible for his death, before allowing that he would be tried by God   
   and country.   
      
   As the evidence were 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 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 hung, 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 - but many people came to   
   witness the priest'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 the   
   Queen and his 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 hung on 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 euphemistic 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,   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)