Veritas et Sapientia-The Beautiful Martydom of Saint Robert Southwell

Mandeville, LA – [This poem, Decease Release, is pulled from a very old text and is edited and left in the old english script it was written in, the spellings are intentional and faithful to the original. See below for a brief biography of Southwell’s martyrdom.- Mike Church]

DECEASE, RELEASE. DUM MOKIOR, ORIOR.

The pounded spice both taste and sent doth please,
In fading smoke the force doth incense shewe ;

The perisht kernell springeth Avith increase,

The lopped tree doth best and soonest growe.

God’s spice I was, and pounding was my due,
In fadinge breath my incense savored best ;

Death was the meane, my kyrnell to renewe,
By loppinge shott I upp to heavenly rest.

Some thinges more perfect are in their decaye,
Like sparke that going out gives clearest light ;

Such was my happ, whose dolefull dying daye
Began my joy and termed Fortune’s spite.

Alive a Queene, now dead I am a sainte ;

Once Mary called, my name nowe Martyr is ;
From earthly raigne debarred by restraint,

In lieu whereof I raigne in heavenly blisse.

My life my greife, my death hath wrought my joye.
My frendes my foyle, my foes my weale procur’d ;

My speedy death hath shortened longe annoye.
And losse of life an endless life assure’d.

My skaffold was the bedd where ease I founde,
The blocke a pillowe of eternal reste ;

My hedman cast me in a blisfull wounde,

His axe cutt off my cares from combed breste.

Rue not my death, rejoyce at my repose ;

It was no death to me, but to my woe ;
The budd was opened to lett out the rose,

The cheynes unloos’d to let the captive goe.

A prince by birth, a prisoner by mishappe.

From crowne to crosse, from throne to thrall I fell ;

My right my ruthe, my titles wrought my trapp.
My weale my woe, my worldly heaven my hell.

By death from prisoner to a prince enhanced,

From crosse to crowne, from thrall to throne againe;
. My ruth my right, my trapp my stile advanced

From woe to weale, from hell to heavenly raigne.

The Martyrdom of St Robert Southwell

But Southwell at his own request was sent to England in 1586 as a Jesuit missionary with Henry Garnett. He went from one Catholic family to another, administering the rites of his Church, and in 1589 became domestic chaplain to Ann Howard, whose husband, the first Earl of Arundel, was in prison convicted of treason. It was to him that Southwell addressed his Epistle of Comfort. This and other of his religious tracts, A Short Rule of Good Life, Triumphs over Death, Mary Magdalen’s Tears and a Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth, were widely circulated in manuscript. That they found favour outside Catholic circles is proved by Thomas Nash’s imitation of Mary Magdalen’s Tears in Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem.

After six years of successful labour Southwell was arrested. He was in the habit of visiting the house of Richard Bellamy, who lived near Harrow and was under suspicion on account of his connexion with Jerome Bellamy, who had been executed for sharing in Anthony Babington’s plot. One of the daughters, Anne Bellamy, was arrested and imprisoned in the gatehouse of Holborn. She revealed Southwell’s movements to Richard Topcliffe, who immediately arrested him. He was imprisoned at first in Topcliffe’s house, where he was repeatedly put to the torture in the vain hope of extracting evidence about other priests.

Transferred to the gatehouse at Westminster, he was so abominably treated that his father petitioned Elizabeth that he might either be brought to tria1 and put to death, if found guilty, or removed in any case from “that filthy hole.” Southwell was then lodged in the Tower, but he was not brought to tria1 until February 1595. There is little doubt that much of his poetry, none of which was published during his lifetime, was written in prison. On the 20th of February 1595 he was tried before the King’s Bench on the charge of treason, and was hanged at Tyburn on the following day. On the scaffold he denied any evil intentions towards the Queen or her government. – Catholic Online.

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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