But to return to Southwell. Transferred to a dungeon in the Tower, “so noisome and filthy that, when he was brought out at the end of the month, his clothes were covered with vermin,” his father wrote to her majesty Queen Elizabeth the letter we have already mentioned. This petition was to some extent regarded. A better lodging was allowed him, and leave accorded his father to supply him with “cloaths and other necessaries”; and amongst the rest, with books which he asked for, which were only the Holy Bible and the works of S. Bernard. “The selection of books,” says Mr. Grosart, “_the_ book of books, and the father of the fathers, for a poet is very noteworthy; and through all his weary imprisonment ‘spiritual things,’ not civil or earthly, were his theme when he discoursed to his sister Mary (Mrs. Bannister) or others permitted occasionally to visit him.” TRIAL AND EXECUTION. We adopt mainly the relation of Southwell’s trial and execution as it is given by Bishop Challoner, supported by a Latin MS. preserved in the archives of the English College of S. Omer’s: “After Father Southwell had been kept close prisoner for three years in the Tower, he sent an epistle to Cecil, Lord Treasurer, humbly entreating his lordship that he might either be brought upon his trial to answer for himself, or at least that his friends might have leave to come and see him. The treasurer answered that, if he was in so much haste to be hanged, he should quickly have his desire. Shortly after this orders were given that he should be removed from the Tower to Newgate, where he was put down into the dungeon called _Limbo_, and there kept for three days. “On the 22d of February, without any previous warning to prepare for his trial, he was taken out of his dark lodging and hurried to Westminster, to hold up his hand there at the bar. The first news of this step towards his martyrdom filled his heart with a joy which he could not conceal. The judges before whom he was to appear were Lord Chief-Justice Popham, Justice Owen, Baron Evans, and Sergeant Daniel. As soon as Father Southwell was brought in, the lord chief-justice made a long and vehement speech against the Jesuits and seminary priests, as the authors and contrivers of all the plots and treasons which, he pretended, had been hatched during that reign. Then was read the bill of indictment against Father Southwell, drawn up by Cook, the queen’s solicitor.” THEIR FAITH WAS THEIR GUILT.