Robert Southwell. Biography

Robert Southwell (c. 1561 – 21 February 1595), also Saint Robert Southwell, was an English Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit Order. He was also a poet, hymnodist, and clandestine missionary in post-Reformation England.

After being arrested and imprisoned in 1592, and intermittently tortured and questioned by Richard Topcliffe, Southwell eventually was tried and convicted of high treason for his links to the Holy See. On 21 February 1595, Father Southwell was hanged at Tyburn. In 1970, he was canonised by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Robert Southwell's Poems:

1. New Prince, New Pomp
2. Love's Servile Lot
3. New Heaven, New War
4. The Burning Babe
5. The Nativity of Christ
6. Content and Rich
7. Upon the Image of Death
8. Man's Civil War
9. Behold a Silly Tender Babe