SOUTHWELL, ROBERT, Blessed. — Jesuit, poet and martyr, born at Horsham St. Faith's (Norfolk) in 1561, died in London on 21 Feb. 1595.
Educated as a Catholic at Douai and Paris, he entered the Order in Rome on 18 Oct. 1578. Ordained priest in 1584, he was for a short time prefect of studies at the English College; but by 1586 he had already left with Fr E. Garnet for England, where his arrival was noted by government spies from the moment of his landing. For about six years he devoted himself to ministry under the assumed name of Cotton, disguised in various ways, staying with leading families, among them the countess of Arundel, wife of the Blessed Philip Howard, of whom he was chaplain. Betrayed by the apostate Anna Bellamy in 1592, he was arrested at Uxenden Hall (Harrow), hideously tortured in the house of the judge Topcliffe, then thrown into the prisons of Newgate and later into those of the Tower of London. After about three years he was tried, condemned to the traitor’s death and hanged at Tyburn. He was beatified on 15 Dec. 1929. Feast on 21 Feb.
His prose and verse works enjoyed extraordinary popularity among his contemporaries, so much so that they were openly sold and passed from hand to hand, whether manuscript or printed in clandestine broadsheets, even though his authorship was known; they also occasioned forgeries. To this fame there certainly contributed the lively and strong feeling of devotion poured out in abundance, but also the style then much admired, known as euphuism, highly artificial, full of antitheses, alliterations, bold and recherché images, straddling between the Baroque and Arcadia. Yet even now there remains the fragrance of the heart and the ardour of one who lived his faith intimately amid persecution, with death ever lurking. Among his poems may be cited *Mary Magdalen's Tears* and above all *St. Peter's Complaint*, freely imitated from Luigi Tansillo’s *Le lacrime di S. Pietro*, and his prose works: *Triumphs over Death*, *Hundred Meditations on the Love of God*.
These works, together with other short writings, were printed in a single volume for the first time in 1595, the year of his martyrdom; followed the same year by another collection of poems under the title *Maeoniae*. The work *A Fourfold Meditation*, published in 1606 under his name, is instead by his friend the Earl of Arundel (cf. H. Thurston, *Philip Earl of Arundel*, in *The Month*, 86 [1896], pp. 32-50).