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Rh nature, date also from these years. But it is improbable that any of his English poems were yet composed. From Father Gerard we learn that Southwell set up a private printing press; from which it would appear that the "apostolate of the press" is not altogether a recent idea. However, Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears, one of his most popular compositions, and model of Thomas Nash's Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, was printed by Cawood with a licence. None of these works was signed, but the Government seems somehow to have suspected the authorship.

The letters written by Father Southwell during these years reveal the Catholic life of the day with terrible simplicity. Mary Stuart had bowed her weary head upon the block; the Spanish Armada had come and gone, uniting Catholic and Protestant in a common zeal to protect England; it would seem that Elizabeth had no longer much need to fear the Old Religion. Yet the persecutions went on with pitiless insistence. "The condition of Catholic recusants here," wrote Father Southwell in 1590, "is the same as usual, deplorable and full of fears and dangers, more especially since our adversaries have looked for wars. As many as are in chains rejoice, and are comforted in their prisons; and they that are at liberty set not their hearts upon it, nor expect it to be of long continuance. All, by the great goodness and mercy of God, arm themselves to suffer anything that can come, how hard soever it may be, as it shall please our Lord . . . A little while ago they apprehended two priests, who have suffered such cruel treatment in the prison of Bridewell as can scarce be believed. . . . Some are there hung up for whole days by the hands, in such manner that they can but just touch the ground with the tips of their toes . . . This purgatory we are looking