We return to Father Southwell, who was drawn on a hurdle or sled from Newgate to Tyburn, and resume the account of the S. Omer’s MS.: “When he was come to the place, getting up into the cart, he made the sign of the cross in the best manner that he could, his hands being pinion’d, and began to speak to the people those words of the apostle (Rom. xiv), ‘Whether we live, we live to the Lord, or whether we die, we die to the Lord; therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.’ Here the sheriff would have interrupted him, but he begged leave that he might go on, assuring him that he would utter nothing that should give offence. Then he spoke as follows: ‘I am come to this place to finish my course, and to pass out of this miserable life; and I beg of my Lord Jesus Christ, in whose most precious Passion and Blood I place my hope of salvation, that he would have mercy on my soul. I confess I am a Catholic priest of the Holy Roman Church, and a religious man of the Society of Jesus; on which account I owe eternal thanks and praises to my God and Saviour.’ Here he was interrupted by a minister telling him that, if he understood what he had said in the sense of the Council of Trent, it was damnable doctrine. But the minister was silenc’d by the standers-by, and Mr. Southwell went on, saying: ‘Sir, I beg of you not to be troublesome to me for this short time that I have to live: I am a Catholic, and in whatever manner you may please to interpret my words, I hope for my salvation by the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and as to the queen, I never attempted, nor contrived, or imagined any evil against her, but have always prayed for her to Our Lord, and for this short time of my life still pray, that, in his infinite mercy, he would be pleased to give her all such gifts and graces which he sees, in his divine wisdom, to be most expedient for the welfare both of her soul and body, in this life and in the next. I recommend in like manner, to the same mercy of God, my poor country, and I implore the divine bounty to favor it with his light and the knowledge of his truth, to the greater advancement of the salvation of souls, and the eternal glory of his divine Majesty. In fine, I beg of the almighty and everlasting God, that this my death may be for my own and for my country’s good, and the comfort of the Catholics my brethren.’
“Having finished these words, and looking for the cart to be immediately drove away, he again blessed himself, and, with his eyes raised to heaven, repeated with great calmness of mind and countenance, ‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,’ with other short ejaculations, till the cart was drawn off. The unskilful hangman had not applied the noose of the rope to the proper place, so that he several times made the sign of the cross whilst he was hanging, and was some time before he was strangled, which some perceiving, drew him by the legs to put an end to his pain, and when the executioner was for cutting the rope before he was dead, the gentlemen and people that were present cried out three several times, ‘Hold, hold!’ for the behavior of the servant of God was so edifying in these his last moments, that even the Protestants who were present at the execution were much affected with the sight.” After he was dead he was cut down and the remainder of the sentence carried out. Turnbull relates that “Lord Mountjoy (Charles Blount), who happened to be present, was so struck by the martyr’s constancy that he exclaimed, ‘May my soul be with this man’s!’ and he assisted in restraining those who would have cut the rope while he was still in life.”
Father Southwell’s reverend and Protestant biographer declares, in concluding his relation of the execution: “I must regard our worthy as a ‘martyr’ in the deepest and grandest sense—a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost. I should blush for my Protestantism if I did not hold in honor, yea reverence, his stainless and beautiful memory.
‘Through this desert, day by day,
Wandered not his steps astray,
Treading still the royal way.’
—Paradisus Animæ.
“So perished Father Southwell, at thirty-three years of age, and so, unhappily, have perished many of the wise and virtuous of the earth. Conscious of suffering in the supposed best of causes, he seems to have met death without terror—to have received the crown of martyrdom not only with resignation, but with joy.”[26]
It is matter of regret that there exists no authentic portrait of Southwell. His biographer is of opinion that a genuine likeness of him would have shown an intellectual, etherealized face, and fancies that he might have sat for the portrait of the Prior in The Lady of Garaye:
“Tender his words, and eloquently wise;
Mild the pure fervor of his watchful eyes;
Meek with serenity and constant prayer,
The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare.
The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still
With a sweet calm that speaks an angel’s will.
Resolving service to his God’s behest,
And ever musing how to serve him best,
Not old, nor young; with manhood’s gentlest grace,
Pale to transparency the pensive face,
Pale not with sickness but with studious thought,
The body tasked, the fine mind overwrought;
With something faint and fragile in the whole,
As though ‘twere but a lamp to hold a soul.”
PART SECOND.—POET.
And here, first, a few words on the prose writings of Southwell. We have already referred to the remarkable letter of admonition by him addressed to his father. It is a severe test to put the prose of any cultivated language to that of comparison with the productions of the same tongue nearly three centuries later. And yet this letter will support such comparison surprisingly well both as to substance and style. The reader will bear in mind the peculiar circumstances under which Southwell addressed this