Southwell, St Robert

Southwell, St Robert (?1561–95), educated by the Jesuits at Douai and Rome, took Roman orders and came to England in 1586 with Henry Garnett (who was subsequently executed for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot). He became in 1589 domestic chaplain to the countess of Arundel, was captured when going to celebrate mass in 1592, repeatedly tortured, and executed after three years' imprisonment. His poems were mainly written in prison. Of these it was his object to make spiritual love, instead of ‘unwoorthy affections’, the subject. His chief work was St Peters Complaint (1595), a long narrative of the closing events of the life of Christ in the mouth of the repentant Peter. He also wrote many shorter devotional poems (some of them collected under the title Moeoniae, 1595) of a high order, notably ‘The Burning Babe’. He was beatified in 1929 and canonized in 1970.