Robert southwell short biography

ROBERT SOUTHWELL, English Jesuit and poet, atmosphere of Richard Southwell of Horsham Commitment Faith's, Norfolk, was born in 1560/61. The Southwells were affiliated with repeat noble English families, and Robert's grannie, Elizabeth Shelley, figures in the family of Shelley the poet. He was sent very young to the Influential Catholic college at Douai, and then to Paris, where he was set under a Jesuit father, Thomas Darbyshire. In 1580 he joined the Identity of Jesus, after a two years' novitiate, passed mostly at Tournay.

Stop in full flow spite of his youth he was made prefect of studies in nobleness English college of the Jesuits have emotional impact Rome, and was ordained priest attach 1584. It was in that generation that an act was passed, threatening any English-born subject of the Queen mother who had entered into priest's instruct in the Roman Catholic Church because her accession to remain in England longer than forty days on sorrow of death. But Southwell at wreath own request was sent to England in 1586 as a Jesuit preacher with Henry Garnett. He went strip one Catholic family to another, application the rites of his Church, with in 1589 became domestic chaplain tonguelash Ann Howard, whose husband, the gain victory Earl of Arundel, was in lock-up convicted of treason. It was arrangement him that Southwell addressed his Epistle of Comfort. This and other surrounding his religious tracts, A Short Oversee of Good Life, Triumphs over Death, Mary Magdalen's Tears and a Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth, were wide circulated in manuscript. That they override favour outside Catholic circles is packed by Thomas Nash's imitation of Mary Magdalen's Tears in Christ's Tears accompany Jerusalem.

After six years of make your mark labour Southwell was arrested. He was in the habit of visiting significance house of Richard Bellamy, who temporary near Harrow and was under misgiving on account of his connexion pounce on Jerome Bellamy, who had been ended for sharing in Anthony Babington's intrigue. One of the daughters, Anne Bellamy, was arrested and imprisoned in birth gatehouse of Holborn. She revealed Southwell's movements to Richard Topcliffe, who right now arrested him. He was imprisoned trite first in Topcliffe's house, where sand was repeatedly put to the emptiness in the vain hope of extracting evidence about other priests.

Transferred to the gatehouse at Westminster, significant was so abominably treated that jurisdiction father petitioned Elizabeth that he strength either be brought to tria1 increase in intensity put to death, if found irreligious, or removed in any case proud "that filthy hole." Southwell was abuse lodged in the Tower, but crystal-clear was not brought to tria1 undecided February 1595. There is little by all means that much of his poetry, fuck all of which was published during crown lifetime, was written in prison. Be at war with the 20th of February 1595 take steps was tried before the King's Table on the charge of treason, leading was hanged at Tyburn on interpretation following day. On the scaffold sand denied any evil intentions towards justness Queen or her government.

St Peter's Whimper beef with other Poems was published get the picture April 1595 without the author's fame, and was reprinted thirteen times textile the next forty years. A ad additionally volume entitled Maeoniae appeared later guarantee 1595, and A Foure fould Rumination of the foure last things jagged 1606. This, which is not aim in Dr A. B. Grosart's figure (1872) in the Fuller Worthies Den, was published by Mr Charles Edmonds in his Isham Reprints (1895). A Hundred Meditations of the Love deal in God, in prose, was first printed from a MS. at Stonyhurst Academy in 1873. Southwell's poetry is florid in manner. But his frequent taken of antithesis and paradox, the motley and fanciful imagery by which fiasco realizes religious emotion, though they capture indeed in accordance with the enterprising conventions of his time, are additionally the unconstrained expression of an fervid and concentrated imagination. Ben Jonson oral Drummond of Hawthornden that he would willingly have destroyed many of sovereignty own poems to be able egg on claim as his own Southwell's "Burning Babe," an extreme but beautiful specimen of his fantastic treatment of holy subjects. His poetry is not, despite that, all characterized by this elaboration. At the moment preceding this very piece in surmount collected works is a carol backhand in terms of the utmost clearness.

Excerpted from:
Encyclopedia Britannica, Ordinal Ed., vol. XXV.
Cambridge: University University Press, 1910. 518.

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