St. Robert Southwell was 33 years old when he was executed at Tyburn on February
21, 1595. When he cited his age during his trial, his torturer Richard Topcliffe
mocked him for claiming equality with Jesus Christ. Southwell answered that he
was but a worm.
It is hard to be temperate when writing about his arrest,
torture and execution--it is obviously a horrendous blot against the Elizabethan
"regime". He was betrayed by a woman that Elizabeth's pursuivant Richard
Topcliffe had raped and blackmailed--he promised to find her a husband since she
was pregnant with his child if she would turn Southwell in; he was
tortured--illegally and excruciatingly--numerous times, starting with a visit to
Topcliffe's personal torture chamber, while Elizabeth's officials looked on;
then he was held in fetid conditions until his father visited him in
Westminster's gatehouse and petitioned the queen to put him to death rather than
leave him there, in his own filth.
Moved to the Tower of London he was held in greater but
solitary comfort, but Queen Elizabeth allowed the sadistic Topcliffe to continue
torturing Southwell, who had readily admitted his priesthood. Prior to his trial
on February 20 he was moved into a hole called Limbo; the government did not
even try to implicate him in any plot against the Queen; he was executed just
because he was a Catholic priest. When he was executed on February 21st, the
crowds made sure he was dead before the butchery began--and no one cheered when
his severed head was displayed to the crowd. Indeed, Elizabeth's government
recognized that they had gone too far--there was lull in executions of Catholic
priests in London. Lord Cecil even ignored Topcliffe's desires to get started on
new victims.
Robert Southwell was canonized by Pope Paul VI among the
group called The Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. In addition to be a great
saint and steadfast martyr, he is regarded as one of the great poets of the
Elizabethan Age. Much of his poetry was written while he was held in solitary
confinement in the Tower of London and was published posthumously.
One of the best accounts of his mission and his suffering is Philip Caraman's study of St. Robert Southwell's friendship with Father Henry Garnet, SJ, which I reviewed here.
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