were irksome. Father Gerard, one of his companions, tells how the young priest tried to familiarise himself with terms of sport for the purpose of conversing with Protestant nobles, and adds that he "used often to complain of his bad memory for such things." On the other hand, one can well imagine how comforting the presence of this earnest, sympathetic soul was to his co-religionists, to whom he ministered largely in London, with occasional journeys to the north of England. "He much excelled," says Father Gerard, "in the art of helping and gaining souls, being at once prudent, pious, meek, and exceedingly winning."
Almost the first of Father Southwell's cares was to win back the wavering faith of his father and his brother. The former, who had married a Protestant lady of the Court, was restored to his birthright by a most eloquent and inimitable epistle from his son. "Howsoever," it concludes, after playing upon almost every key of emotion, "the soft gales of your morning pleasures lulled you into slumbers, however the violent heat of noon might awake affections, yet now in the cool and calm of the evening retire to a Christian rest, and close up the day of your life with a clear sunset."
In 1589 Father Southwell became chaplain and confessor to the Countess of Arundel, whose husband, Philip Howard, was then confined in the Tower. There followed several years of comparative safety at Arundel House in the Strand, during which began his real literary activity. Triumphs over Death, perhaps his first known work, was occasioned by the death of a certain "noble lady" of the Howards, and was designed as a comfort and check to inordinate grief. Notes on Theology, and other prose works mostly of a theological
