After being arrested and imprisoned in 1592, and intermittently tortured and questioned by priest hunter Sir Richard Topcliffe, Southwell was eventually tried and convicted of high treason against Queen Elizabeth I, but in reality for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, renounce his belief in the independence of the English Church from control by the State, and similarly repudiate the authority of the Holy See.

For greater safety Southwell was sent to Paris and studied at the College de Clermont under the tutelage of the Jesuit Thomas Darbyshire.

[3] He bemoans the situation, writing, "How can I but wast in anguish and agony that find myself disjoined from that company, severed from that Society, disunited from that body wherein lyeth all my life my love my whole hart and affection" (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Anglia 14, fol.

[2] It was in 1584 that an act was passed forbidding any English-born subject of Queen Elizabeth, who had entered into priests' orders in the Catholic Church since her accession, to remain in England longer than forty days on pain of death.

Having been interrogated and raped by Richard Topcliffe, the Queen's chief priest-hunter and torturer, she revealed Southwell's movements and he was immediately arrested.

No documentary evidence of such a petition survives, but something of the kind must have happened since his friends were able to provide him with food and clothing, and to send him the works of St. Bernard and a Bible.

When asked to enter a plea, he declared himself "not guilty of any treason whatsoever", objecting to a jury being made responsible for his death but allowing that he would be tried by God and country.

Execution of sentence on a notorious highwayman had been appointed for the same time, but at a different place – perhaps to draw the crowds away – and yet many came to witness Southwell's death.

Having been dragged through the streets on a sledge, he stood in the cart beneath the gibbet and made the sign of the cross with his pinioned hands before reciting a passage from the Christians' scriptures' Romans chapter 14.

The sheriff made to interrupt him; but he was allowed to address the people at some length, confessing that he was a Jesuit priest and praying for the salvation of Queen and country.

As the executioner made to cut him down, in preparation for disembowelling him while still alive, Lord Mountjoy and some other onlookers tugged at his legs to hasten his death.

[11] This and other of his religious tracts, A Short Rule of Good Life, Triumphs over Death, and a Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth, circulated in manuscript.

Then on 5 April, John Cawood, the publisher of Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears, who probably owned the copyright all along, entered the book in the Stationers' Register, and brought out a third edition.

See also Alexis Possoz, Vie du Pre R. Southwell (1866); and a life in Henry Foley's Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus: historic facts illustrative of the labours and sufferings of its members in the 16th and 17th centuries, 1877 (i.

One such contemporary setting survives, Thomas Morley's provision of music for stanzas from "Mary Magdalen's Complaint at Christ's Death" in his First book of ayres (1600).

Elizabeth Grymeston, in a book published for her son (1604), described how she sang stanzas from Saint Peter's Complaint as part of her daily prayer.

The best-known modern setting of Southwell's words is Benjamin Britten's use of stanzas from "New Heaven, New War" and "New Prince, New Pomp", two of the pieces in his Ceremony of Carols (1942).

In the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, Southwell and his companion and associate Henry Garnet were noted for their allegiance to the doctrine of mental reservation, a controversial ethical concept of the period.

[5] Under Southwell's Latinised name, Sotvellus, and in his memory, the English Jesuit Nathaniel Bacon, Secretary of the Society of Jesus, published the updated third edition of the Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Iesu (Rome, 1676).

[5] In the view of the critic Helen C. White, probably no work of Southwell's is more "representative of his Baroque genius than the prose Marie Magdalens Funeral Teares, published late in 1591, close to the end of his career.

The very choice of this subject would seem the epitome of the Baroque; for it is a commonplace that the penitent Magdalen, with her combination of past sensuality and current remorsefulness, was a favourite object of contemplation to the Counter-Reformation.

[16] Southwell endeavoured to convince remaining English Catholics that religious persecution by the State represented an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Throughout the seven stanzas, Southwell describes the martyrdom of English Catholics at the time, employing biblical figures of both Testaments (Samson and the Apostles).

Being next to God is the perfect way to achieve spiritual bliss: "To him I live, for him I hope to dye" is Southwell's manner of informing the reader of the reason for his existence, which does not end with death.

"[19] In fact, there is a strong case to be made for Southwell's influence on his contemporaries and successors, among them Drayton, Lodge, Nashe, Herbert, Crashaw, and especially William Shakespeare, who seems to have known his work, both poetry and prose, extremely well.