Southwell, Robert (cl561-1595) English poet and author of religious writings. Southwell was ordained a Jesuit priest in Rome in 1584; two years later he was sent, at his own request, as a missionary to England, where his presence (after forty days) was legally treason. In 1592, after six years of secret service to English Catholics, he was arrested. He was imprisoned and repeatedly tortured for three years, and hanged in 1595. His religious tracts, such as Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears (pub 1609), were written before his imprisonment and probably fairly widely circulated in manuscript. Most of his poetry, which is concerned with the spiritual life, was composed while he was in prison. Saint Peter's Complaint was published anonymously in 1595 and followed shortly by Maeoniae, a supplementary volume. A Fourfold Meditation of the Four Last Things was published in 1606. The  Burning Babe, which was highly praised by Ben Jonson, is Southwell's best-known poem.