Cogitations of a Catholic Bookworm: GOD's Secret Agents (A Book Review)
GOD'S Secret Agents QUEEN ELIZABETH’S Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the GUNPOWDER PLOT by Alice Hogge “Southwell was lifted into the cart. This was the moment he had waited for all his life. ‘Take now your rest in the shade,’ he had written nine years earlier, ‘and open your mouths to draw in breath, so that when your hour comes, you too may go down into the sun-scorched arena.’ Tyburn in February had become Southwell’s sun-scorched arena now and he was ready. He commended into God’s hands the Queen, his country and his soul. The hangman stripped him to his shirt and placed the noose about his neck. ‘While we live we conquer, nor shall we be less victorious if we die,’ he had written. Now he made the sign of the cross, murmuring, “ in manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum. ’ And slowly the cart was drawn away.” (God’s Secret Agents, p. 190) Thus was ended at Tyburn Tree the life of Saint Robert Southwell: priest, martyr, poet, Englishman. St. Robert Southwel