Southwell

“ Ultimately, after several reprieves, upon the intercession of the Earl of Seaforth, Southwell was released on 2 Jan. 1690, and at once proceeded to England. His influence and that of his friends helped to secure reprieves for his comrades, who were not finally released until William's victory at the Boyne on 1 July 1690. In April 1693 Southwell received a commission to inspect and receive arrears due on crown lands in Ireland, and on 16 June 1697 he was made one of the four commissioners of revenue in Ireland, a post to which he was reappointed in 1702, and which he retained until 1712. ”

“ An officer essayed to cut the rope while Southwell still breathed, but Lord Mountjoy and other bystanders ordered him to let the dying man alone. When his head was cut off and held up to the crowd, no one was heard to cry ‘Traitor!’
Southwell was described as of middle stature and auburn hair. A contemporary life-sized portrait (in oils) is in the Jesuits' house at Fribourg. A crayon drawing of it by Charles Weld, esq., of Chideock was made in 1845, and is now at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. An engraving of this drawing by W. J. Alais was prefixed to Dr. Grosart's edition of the poems. ”

“ The church of Southwell was despoiled of all its monuments and early records during the troubles of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the only MS. of any importance that has come down to us besides the Statutes of Queen Elizabeth is the “Registrum Album,” or “White Book of Southwell.” The former are printed both in Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” and in the appendix to Dickenson’s “History of the Antiquities of Southwell.” Mr. Dimock, the Editor of the “Magna Vita St. Hugonis,” in the Rolls Series, published some years ago a history of the fabric of Southwell Minster ”

“ The finest parish church in the county is that of Newark. The churches of St Mary, Nottingham, and of Southwell were collegiate churches; Southwell, now a cathedral, is a splendid building, principally Norman. The churches of Balderton, Bawtry, Hoveringham, Mansfield and Worksop are also partly Norman, and those of Coddington, Hawton and Upton St Peter near Southwell, Early English. Of the old castles, the principal remains are those at Newark, but there are several interesting old mansions, as at Kingshaugh, Scrooby, Shelford and Southwell. ”

“ I likewise mentioned his own affair to Mr. Southwell, and I hope that will be done too; for Southwell seems to think it reasonable, and I will mind him of it again. Tell him this nakedly. You need not know the particulars. They are secrets, one of them is about Mrs. South having a pension; the other about his salary from the government for the tithes of the park, that lie in his parish, to be put upon the establishment. I dined in the city with my printer, with whom I had some small affair. I have no large work on my hands now. ”

“ In the thirty-fourth year of his reign, Henry VIII., by act of parliament, declared Southwell the head and mother church of the town and county of Nottingham, and soon afterwards re-founded and re-endowed it, probably at the instance of Cranmer, at that time in the height of favour, who was a native of Nottinghamshire, not far from Southwell. Soon after the accession of Edward VI. the chapter was again dissolved, and its prebendal, and other estates granted to John, Earl of Warwick, afterwards made Duke of Northumberland ”

“ His sister hath a dash of the same.' [14]
'Your Godson Charles,' he tells Southwell, 'grows like a weede without much culture or help of the gardiners. Perhaps it may be never the worse, for the race will not be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Nor will favour go to the men of skill, or bread to the men of understanding.' [15] 'Henry,' he says, 'is more for the bar than the stage. His talent is in stating arguments impromptu, pro and contra, for every thing he meets with. ”

“ Southwell on his return from Brandenburg practically retired into private life, and fixed his residence permanently at Kings Weston. Thence he resumed his correspondence with Sir William, who by this time was engaged in a fresh series of encounters with his different enemies, who all over Ireland had at once taken heart. Ormonde also hesitated to support his wish to be a Privy Councillor, [31] and the farmers renewed their attacks. ”

“ With the exception, indeed, of the brief and bewildering interval which he passed, as we have seen, in the company of Miss Chaworth, it was at Southwell alone that an opportunity was ever afforded him of profiting by the bland influence of female society, or of seeing what woman is in the true sphere of her virtues, home. The amiable and intelligent family of the Pigots received him within their circle as one of themselves: and in the Rev. [98] John Becher [48] the youthful poet found not only an acute and judicious critic, but a sincere friend. ”

“ Harley tells me he will introduce me. This I tell your grace in confidence, only to satisfy you in particular, why the queen has not yet sent a letter in form. Upon that dispatch to Mr. Southwell, I was perplexed to the last degree. I did not value the slighting manner of the bishop of Kildare's letter, barely desiring Mr. Southwell to call on me for the papers, without any thing farther, as if I had been wholly insignificant; but I was at a loss how to behave myself with the duke and Mr. Harley. ”

“ Cheyne threw himself into Dover Castle: Southwell and Abergavenny held to the Queen as had been feared. Abergavenny raised two thousand men, and attacked and dispersed a party of insurgents under Sir Henry Isly on Wrotham Heath; but Abergavenny's followers deserted him immediately afterwards, and marched to Rochester to Wyatt. Southwell could do nothing; he believed that the rebellion would spread to London, and that Mary would be lost. ”

“ When his brother accused Surrey and the Howards fell into disgrace, Southwell secured of their property Badlesmere in Kent, which he soon sold. He had another house in the county, Jotes Place, Mereworth. He resigned his mastership of the rolls in 1550. He took a very active part in putting down Wyatt's rebellion, and was rewarded with some of Wyatt's lands at Aylesford and elsewhere. He died about the beginning of November 1559, and was buried on 8 Nov. He married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Neville, fourth son of George, lord Abergavenny ”

“ That great poet’s religious creed, like other important features of his life, must no doubt remain always matter of conjecture. If he was a Catholic, his creed was probably no more than a tradition, strong enough to keep his pages free from the pictures of dissolute monks and nuns in which most of his contemporary playwrights delighted, but far from the fervor which sent Southwell to the scaffold, or the sincerity which, in a milder age, made Sherburne welcome poverty and disgrace. ”

“ Since that account, too, the old hall of Annesley has undergone a renovation, and that scene of melancholy, desertion, and decay there described, exists now only in the volume which recorded it. In the present paper Southwell and Harrow will chiefly demand our attention.
Southwell, during the period of his Harrow school-life, became a most favorite resort of his. His mother had settled down there. Body and mind were now in progress of expansion toward manhood. His relish for society, his [Pg 550] love of fame, and his love of poetry, were every day more and more developing themselves. ”

“ The escheator of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk was Richard Southwell, a friend of John Paston’s, and if the writs of diem clausit extremum had been issued at once, the latter doubtless hoped that the rights of Fastolf’s trustees would have been immediately acknowledged by two different juries, the one in Norfolk and the other in Suffolk. ”

“ SOUTHWELL, Sir RICHARD (1504–1564) , courtier and official, born in 1504, was descended from a family long settled in the east of England. His grandfather, Sir Richard Southwell of Barham Hall, Suffolk, acquired Woodrising in Norfolk by his marriage with Amy, daughter and coheiress of Sir Edmund Wichingham (cf. Paston Letters) . He left two sons ”

“ He proceeded to Southwell, and continued his march in the direction of the Trent; and he appears to have crossed that river at Fiskerton, which in the summer time is shallow, and easily fordable by men and horses. As Newark p. 180was preoccupied by the King’s army, Fiskerton was the only safe place near Southwell, where the earl’s forces could pass the Trent. After crossing the river, they took up a position on the elevated ground to the southward of, and overlooking, the little village of East Stoke, in Nottinghamshire. ”

“ Charles Edmonds, the accomplished bibliographer, who in a letter to the Athenæum, on November 1, 1873, suggested for the first time the identity of ‘W. H.,’ the dedicator of Southwell’s poem, with Thorpe’s ‘Mr. W. H.’
[401] A manuscript volume at Oscott College contains a contemporary copy of those poems by Southwell which ‘unfained affectionate W.H.’ first gave to the printing press. ”

“ Southwell to Sir William Petre: MS. Mary. Domestic, State Paper Office. (Back to Main Text)
Footnote 218: "You shall understand that Henry Lord of Abergavenny; Robert Southwell, knight, and George Clarke, gentleman, have most traitorously, to the disturbance of the commonwealth, stirred and raised up the queen's most loving subjects of this realm, to [maintain the] most wicked and devilish enterprise of certain wicked and perverse councillors, to the utter confusion of this her Grace's realm, and the perpetual servitude of all her most loving subjects. In consideration whereof, we Sir Thos. ”

“ Topcliffe's servant Jones tracked him to the tiles of Bellamy's house, and Topcliffe himself led him triumphantly back to London. ‘I never did take so weighty a man,’ Topcliffe wrote to the queen, ‘if he be rightly used’ (Strype, Annals, iv. 185) . Imprisoned at first in his captor's house in Westminster churchyard, Southwell was brutally tortured. Four days were spent by Topcliffe in seeking to extort from him information that might be of service in prosecuting other catholics. ”

“ Southwell was well acquainted with the poetic efforts of his contemporaries, and traces of the influence of Thomas Watson and Nicholas Breton are apparent in his verse. But his chief aim as a poet was, as he avows in the addresses to the reader both before his ‘St. Peter's Complaint’ and ‘Mary Magdalen's Tears,’ to prove that ‘vertue’ or ‘piety’ was as fit a subject for a poet's pen as the vain, worldly, or sensual topics of which poets conventionally treated. ”

“ The Scottish army was at that time engaged upon the siege of the Royalist castle of Newark, near Southwell; and to Southwell the King, therefore, went from Oxford, in disguise. He left Oxford on April 26th, and, to the last incapable of being straightforward, even toward his own, gave out to his council that he was going to London, to treat with Parliament. ”

“ He married, first, Thomasine, daughter of Sir Robert Darcy of Danbury, Essex, by whom he had a daughter Elizabeth, who married George Heneage; secondly, Mary, daughter of Thomas Darcy, also of Danbury Essex, by whom he had had two illegitimate sons in the lifetime of his first wife, namely, Richard Southwell of Horsham St. Faith's, Norfolk, and Thomas Southwell of Monton. Richard Southwell of Horsham St. Faith's was the father of Robert Southwell [q. v.] ”

“ Returning to England in 1661, he shortly afterwards became acquainted with Sir William Petty [q. v.] The acquaintance ripened into a lifelong friendship, which was further cemented by Petty's marriage, in 1667, with Southwell's cousin, Lady Fenton. He appears as clerk to the commission of prizes in 1664, and in September of that year was appointed one of the clerks to the privy council. He was knighted on 21 Dec. 1665, and the same year appointed deputy vice-admiral of the provinces of Munster, succeeding to the vice-admiralty itself on the death of his father twelve years later. ”

“ In passing northward from Lincoln, a profitable digression may be had to Southwell, whose noble choir seems to be an emanation from Lincoln, and its far-famed chapter-house from York; and to Newstead, whose beautiful west front and lovely carving agrees in style with the eastern portion of Lincoln.{200}
Yorkshire is especially the land of minsters and abbey churches. To attempt here a description of them would be vain; a Yorkshire tour is one of the richest treats the student can look forward to, and one to which he ought to be liberal in his allowance of time. ”

“ He became vicar-general of the peculiar of Southwell in 1788, and died on 28 May 1795. He was a man of no eminent powers or attainments, but an excellent type of the learned, tolerant, and useful clergyman of the eighteenth century. ‘His matter,’ says Warburton, writing to Hunt, ‘is rational, but superficial and thin-spread. ”

“ Nor, with great submission to your grace, can I prevail on my own pride to desire he would make any mention of me in his answer. Your grace is convinced, that unless I write a heap of lies, the queen had granted that affair before my lord duke was named. I desire to convince nobody else; and, since the thing is done, it is not of any consequence who were instrumental in it. I could not forbear yesterday reminding my lord treasurer of what I said to Mr. Southwell before his lordship, when he came to take his leave before he went to Ireland ”