Works adjourn’d have many stays;
Long demurs breed new delays.”

—Robert Southwell, 1593.[18]

Concerning the writer of these beautiful lines, the English historian, Stow, makes the following brief mention in his Chronicle: “February 20, 1594-5.—Southwell, a Jesuit, that long time had lain prisoner in the Tower of London, was arraigned at the King’s Bench bar. He was condemned, and on the next morning drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged, bowelled, and quartered.” From this account we are unable to discover that the man whose judicial murder Stow thus records was put to death for any offence but that of being a Jesuit, and of having “long time lain in prison in the Tower of London.” And yet, in thus stating the case, Stow tells the simple truth; for Southwell was guilty of no more serious crime than his sacerdotal character, and of suffering the imprisonment and tortures inflicted upon him in consequence thereof. For three years previous to his death he had been in prison and in the Tower, had lain in noisome and filthy dungeons, and been subjected many times to torture and the rack. From the high social position of his family, the fame of his literary accomplishments, his admirable and saintly bearing as a missionary priest in England, for six long years carrying his life in his hand while ministering to a scattered flock, obliged to move from place to place in disguise as though he were a malefactor, and finally, from the wonderful fortitude and constancy with which he was said to have suffered torture, his case was very generally known in London, and deeply commiserated even by many Protestants. So deep and widespread, indeed, was this sympathy that, when it was determined by the officers of the crown to try and condemn him on one and the same day, and execute him the next morning, they withheld from the public all announcement of his execution, meanwhile giving notice of the hanging of a famous highwayman in another place in order to draw off the concourse of spectators. But it availed not, for there were many who kept so close a watch upon the movements at Newgate, to which prison he had been removed a few days before his trial, that, when Southwell was brought out to be drawn on a sled or hurdle to the place of execution at Tyburn, he was followed by great numbers of people, and among them many persons of distinction, who witnessed the carrying out of his dreadful sentence, which was that he should be “hung, bowelled, and quartered.”

That our readers may understand that our qualification of Southwell’s execution as a judicial murder is not the result of mere personal sympathy or of religious prejudice, we will here record the judgment of several Protestant authorities, who speak out concerning it in a manner not to be misunderstood. In the valuable Cyclopædia of English Literature, by Chambers, we read concerning Southwell that, after having ministered secretly but zealously to the scattered adherents of his creed, “without, as far as is known, doing anything to disturb the peace of society, he was apprehended and committed to a dungeon in the Tower, so noisome and filthy that, when he was brought out for examination, his clothes were covered with vermin. Upon this his father, a man of good family, presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth, begging that, if his son had committed anything for which, by the laws, he had deserved death, he might suffer death; if not, as he was a gentleman, he begged her majesty would be pleased to order him to be treated as a gentleman. Southwell after this was somewhat better lodged, but an imprisonment of three years, with ten inflictions of the rack, wore out his patience, and he entreated to be brought to trial. Cecil is said to have made the brutal remark that, ‘if he was in so much haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire.’ Being at the trial found guilty, upon his own confession, of being a Romish priest, he was condemned to death, and executed at Tyburn accordingly, with all the horrible circumstances dictated by the old treason laws of England. Throughout all these scenes he behaved with a mild fortitude which nothing but a highly regulated mind and satisfied conscience could have prompted.”

Cleveland (Compendium of English Literature, p. 88), after stating the circumstances of Southwell’s imprisonment, trial, and execution, remarks: “The whole proceeding should cover the authors of it with everlasting infamy. It is a foul stain upon the garments of the maiden queen that she can never wipe off. There was not a particle of evidence at his trial that this pious and accomplished poet meditated any evil designs against the government. He did what he had a perfect right to do; ay, what it was his duty to do, if he conscientiously thought he was right—endeavor to make converts to his faith, so far as he could without interfering with the right of others. If there be anything to be execrated, it is persecution for opinion’s sake.”

Allibone, in his Dictionary of English Literature, says that Southwell, “to the disgrace of the English government, suffered as a martyr at Tyburn, February 21, 1595, after three years’ imprisonment in the Tower, during which it is asserted he was ten times subjected to the torture. He was a good poet, a good prose writer, and a better Christian than his brutal persecutors.”

Old Fuller, in his Worthies of England, as might be expected, views Southwell with a stern English Protestant eye, and thus dismisses him: “Robert Southwell was born in this county (Norfolk), as Pitsons affirmeth, who, although often mistaken in his locality, may be believed herein, as professing himself familiarly acquainted with him at Rome. But the matter is not much where he was born, seeing, though cried up by men of his own profession for his many books in verse and prose, he was reputed a dangerous enemy by the state, for which he was imprisoned and executed March the 3d, 1595” (vol. iii. p. 187).

Robert Southwell was the third son of Richard Southwell, Esq., of Horsham, St. Faith’s, Norfolk. The curious in genealogy, while investigating family lines associated with the Southwell pedigree, have found connected with it, in degrees more or less near, the names of Paston, Sidney, Howard, Newton, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Of his early years there is but slight record, save that, when still very young, he was sent to Douai to be educated. From Douai he passed to Paris and thence to Rome, where, in 1578, before he had yet reached the age of seventeen, he was received into the order of the Society of Jesus. On completion of his novitiate and termination of the courses of philosophy and theology, he was made prefect of studies of the English College at Rome. Ordained priest in 1584, and, as appears from his letter addressed, February 20, 1585, to the general of the order, seeking the “perilous” errand wherein his future martyrdom seems rather to have been anticipated than merely referred to as a simple possibility,[19] he left Rome on the 8th of May, 1586, a missionary to his native land, or, in other words, took up his line of march for the scaffold and for heaven. We have, naturally enough, but scant record of the young priest’s journey to and arrival in England; for, as the mere landing in England by a Catholic priest was then a penal offence punishable with death, Southwell’s return to his native country was surrounded as much as possible by secrecy. Although yearning to visit his home and embrace his family, he carefully abstained from going near them—of doing that which, in his quaint phrase of the day, “maketh my presence perilous.” But he was aware that his father was in danger of losing, if he had not already lost, his faith; and these fears were almost confirmed by the facts that he had formed a marriage with a lady of the court, and that his wealth gave him entrance to court circles which were necessarily violently Protestant. Deeply solicitous for his father’s spiritual condition, he therefore addressed him a letter of admonition and advice, not less remarkable for its tone of affection than for its energy and eloquence. We cite it in another place.

HUNTED DOWN.

At a time when, as Mr. Grosart says, “it was a crime to be a Catholic: it was proof of high treason to be a priest: it was to invite ‘hunting’ as of a wild beast to be a Jesuit,” we cannot reasonably look for many recorded traces of Father Southwell’s presence and journeyings to and fro while in England. He could only move in disguise or under the darkness of night; he was liable to be thrown into prison anywhere on the merest suspicion of any irresponsible accuser. The few Catholics who were ready to give him shelter and hospitality did so with the halter around their necks; for confiscation and death were the penalty, as they well knew, for “harboring” a priest. It is nevertheless certain that his refuge in London was the mansion of the Countess of Arundel, whose husband, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, was imprisoned in the Tower, and died there, the noblest victim to the jealous and suspicious tyranny of Elizabeth, non sine veneni suspicione, as his epitaph still testifies.