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Excerpt from Marie Magdalen's Funerall Teares for the Death of Our Saviour Robert Southwell was a Catholic, and, what was still more criminal in the eyes of the English Government in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he was a Jesuit. He was born about the year 1562, of a respectable Catholic family, at St. Faith's, in Norfolk, and was, at an early age, sent to the English College at Douay, for education. From Douay he went to Rome, and, at the age of six teen, was received into the order of the society of Jesus. Having finished his noviciate, and gone through his course of philosophy and divi nity with great credit, he was made Prefect of the studies of the English College at Rome. In 1584, he was sent as a missionary Priest into his native country, having, as he says, travelledfar and brought home a freight of spiritual sub stance to enrich his friends, and medicinable te ceipts against their ghostly maladies. Father Southwell continued in England, labouring dili gently in his function until the year 1529 when he was apprehended in a gentleman's house at Uxenden, in Middlesex, 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 presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth, begging, that if his son had commit ted any thing for which, by the laws, he had de served death, he might sufl'er death if not, as he was a gentleman, he hoped Her Majestywould be pleased to order that he should be treated as a gentleman. The Queen was graci ously pleased to listen to this prayer, and order ed that Southwell should have a better lodging, and that his father should have permission to supply him with clothes and other necessaries, together with the books he asked for, which were only the Bible, and the works of Saint Bernard. For three years was he kept in prison, and what was worse for himself and more dis graceful to the government, it is said, he was put to the rack ten several times. Wearied out with torture and solitary impri sonment, he at length applied to the Lord Trea surer Cecil, that he might either be brought totrial, to answer for himself, or, at least, that his friends might have leave to come and see him. To this application, if we are to believe the ac count of the Latin manuscript, which was for merly deposited in the archives of the English College at St. Omers, and of which a translation is given in Ulla-donor's Memoirs of Missionary Priests, the Lord Treasurer answered, that if he was in so much haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire. Shortly after this he was removed from the Tower to Newgate, where he was put down into the dungeon called limbo, and there kept for three days. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
