Robert South
He was born at Hackney, Middlesex, and was educated at Westminster School under Richard Busby, and at Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating on 11 December 1651.
[1] Among his college exercises was a panegyric on Oliver Cromwell in Latin verse on the conclusion of peace at the end of the First Anglo-Dutch War (5 April 1654).
On account of his using the Book of Common Prayer John Owen, then Dean of Christ Church and vice-chancellor, unsuccessfully opposed his proceeding M.A.
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon made him his chaplain, in consequence of his oration on his installation as chancellor (15 November).
On a scrutiny, Nathaniel Crew, the senior proctor, declared the majority to be for South, who was presented by John Wallis.
[1] South's ridicule of the Royal Society, in an oration at the dedication of the Sheldonian Theatre, July 1669, called forth a remonstrance from Wallis, addressed to Robert Boyle.
[1] A zealous advocate of the doctrine of passive obedience, he strongly opposed the Toleration Act, declaiming in unmeasured terms against the various Nonconformist sects.
In 1676 he was appointed chaplain to Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, ambassador-extraordinary to the king of Poland, and he sent an account of his visit to Edward Pococke in a letter, dated Dantzic, 16 December 1677, which was printed along with South's Posthumous Works in 1717.
[1] In James II's reign Rochester, then lord-lieutenant of Ireland, is said to have offered South an Irish archbishopric (Cashel was vacant, 1685–91).
At the Glorious Revolution South hesitated to transfer his allegiance, being, according to White Kennett, under the influence of William Sherlock, D.D.
He made galling references to Sherlock's career, 'tainted with a conventicle' at the outset; vehemently assailed his earlier writings as heterodox on the doctrine of atonement, and maintained his 'new notion' of the Trinity to be tritheistic; an opinion reiterated in his ''Tritheism Charged upon Dr Sherlock's New Notion of the Trinity, and the Charge Made Good (1695).
[1] At the south wall of the sanctuary stands a large monument of white marble with a reclining figure, right arm on a cushion, and hand on a skull, and a closed book in the left.
The background is framed by two fluted Corinthian column, on either side of an inscription tablet, surmounted by a glory, and two cherubs on drapery.
He was praised for his wit, though Mark Noble wrote that once, whilst giving a sermon to Charles II, he observed the entire congregation had gone to sleep - Noble remarks that, "Stopping and changing the tone of his voice, he called thrice to Lord Lauderdale, who, awakened, stood up: "My Lord" says South very composedly "I am sorry to interrupt your repose, but I must beg that you will not snore quite so loud, lest you should awaken his majesty", and then as calmly continued his discourse.
