The poet Robert Southwell was martyred on February 21, 1595. Writing about him, Thurston calls attention to an interesting coincidence in his life. His grandfather, Sir Richard Southwell, a prominent courtier in the reign of Henry VIII, had brought the poet Henry Howard to the block, and yet Divine providence made their respective grandsons, Robert Southwell and Philip, Earl of Arundel, devoted friends and fellow-prisoners for the Faith. The poetry, however, had shifted to the Southwell side, for, unlike his friend, Arundel did not cultivate the muse. Southwell had been a pupil of the great Lessius at Louvain, and had made the "grand act" in philosophy at the age of seventeen. At Paris he applied for admission to the Society, but was refused, and his grief on that occasion elicited the first poetical effusion of his of which we have any knowledge. Two years later, however, he was accepted; he was ordained in 1584, and became prefect of studies in the English College at Rome. In 1586 he was sent to England, and passed under the name of Cotton. Two years later he was made chaplain of the Countess of Arundel, and thus came into relationship with her imprisoned husband, Philip, the ancestor of the present ducal house of Norfolk. Southwell's prose elegy, "Triumphs Over Death," was written to console the earl. In going his rounds he usually passed as a country gentleman, and that accounts for the "hawk" metaphors which so often occur in his verse. He was finally arrested at Harrow in 1592, and after three years' imprisonment in a dungeon which was swarming with vermin, he was hanged, drawn and quartered. Even during his lifetime, his poetical works were highly esteemed.