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Lives of Saints & Servants of God

Robert Southwell

Priest, Poet and Martyr

De Maria, Fiorella Sultana

Life of the famous martyr of penal times

With his father an ambitious (and protestant) courtier to Queen Elizabeth, Robert was brought up in the Catholic faith by his mother. Accomplished writer of prose and poetry, he worked as a priest with great zeal and success around London from 1586-1592. He was betrayed, tortured with extreme severity and imprisoned in the Tower. At 33 he was executed at Tyburn, London, (Near today’s Marble Arch) professing his faith and his priesthood, and praying for his enemies. One of the Forty Martyrs, he was canonised in 1970.