SOUTHWELL 



SOWING-MACHINES 



595 



Southwell, ROBERT, poet and Jesuit martyr, 

 was born about 1562, son of Richard Southwell of 

 Horsham St Faith's in Norfolk, the family being 

 ancient and now represented collaterally by Vis- 

 count Southwell. He was stolen from his "cradle 

 by a Gypsy woman, but soon recovered, and at 

 fifteen was sent to Paris for his education. 

 Challoner states that he studied also at Douay, 

 but certain it is that he soon went to Rome, being 

 received into the Society of Jesus on the festival of 

 St Luke 1578. After a residence at Tournay he 

 returned to Rome and distinguished himself so 

 highly in the course of pliilosormy and theology as 

 to be appointed prefect of the English college 

 there. He was ordained priest in 1584, and three 

 years later arrived in England in company with 

 Father Henry Garnet, who was also to earn the 

 martyr's crown. Southwell was first sheltered by 

 Lord Vanx, and next became domestic chaplain to 

 the Countess of Arundel. Six years of quiet fol- 

 lowed in which he fearlessly followed his vocation, 

 and wrote his Consolation for Catholics as well 

 as most of his poems. At length in 1592 he was 

 betrayed into the hands of the authorities, was kept 

 some weeks and infamously tortured ten times in 

 the house of an abandoned ruffian named Topcliffe, 

 then transferred to the Gatehouse, and next to a 

 noisome dungeon in the Tower. ' Though thirteen 

 times most cruelly tortured,' writes Cecil, ' he can- 

 not be induced to confess anything, not even the 

 colour of the horse whereon on a certain day 

 he rode." After three years' close imprisonment 

 he wrote to entreat the grace of an open trial 

 to Cecil, who is said to have made the brutal 

 reply that ' if he was in so much haste to be 

 hanged he should have his desire." He was trans- 

 ferred to Newgate, and, after three days of con- 

 finement in Limbo, carried to Westminster for 

 trial. The inevitable sentence followed, and on 

 the 22d February 1595 he suffered at Tyburn, the 

 victim of a liarbarous statute, with all the high 

 courage of the primitive martyrs. His prose writ- 

 ings are no longer interesting, but Iris poems 

 retain their value. His longest poem is Saint 

 Peter's Complaint ; his most famous, The Burning 

 Babe, a beautiful little piece of sanctified fancy, to 

 have written which Ben Jonson told Dmmmond he 

 would have been content to burn many of his 

 poems. 



South wold, a Suffolk watering-place, 41 miles 

 by a small branch-line NE. of Ipswich. A muni- 

 cipal borough since 1489, it was almost destroyed 

 by fire in 1659, but retained its fine Perpendicular 

 church (1460), 144 feet long. In Southwold or 

 Sole Bay a bloody but indecisive sea-light was 

 fought between the English and the Dutch on 

 28th May 1672. Pop. ( 1851 ) 1955 ; ( 1891 ) 2311. 



Soiirestre, EMILE, French novelist and play- 

 wright, was born at Morlaix, April 15, 1806, and, 

 after some years of struggle, drifted into journal- 

 ism, and at 'thirty went up to Paris, where he soon 

 made some reputation by his charming sketches 

 of Brittany and its people. These form the still 

 delightful books, Les Derniers Bretons and Foyer 

 Brrt'.n. his best work. Another deservedly popular 

 book, Un Philosophe sous les Toits, was crowned by 

 the Academy in 1851. Souvestre's plays were less 

 successful than his stories, which, although didactic, 

 are really seldom dull. He died in Paris, 5th July 

 1854. His Canseries historiques et litteraires (2 vols. 

 1854) are interesting. 



Soiiza. MADAME DE, a charming French writer, 

 was liorn in Paris, 14th May 1761, her maiden name 

 AdelaTdo-Marie-Enrilie Filleul. Her parents died 

 early, and she was brought up in a convent, from 

 which she emerged only to marry the Comte de 

 Flahaut, then fifty-seven, a union which was not 



happy. At the outbreak of the Revolution she 

 found refuge, together with her only son, first in 

 Germany, then in England, and here learned of 

 her husband's execution at Arras (1793). For 

 solace she turned to writing, and, in the midst of 

 grief and poverty, wrote her first book, the fresh 

 and delightful Adele de Senange (Lond. 1794). 

 After Thermidor she tried to return to France, but 

 had to tarry a while at Hamburg, where she met 

 the Marquis de Souza-Botelho (1758-1825), after- 

 wards Portuguese minister at Paris, whom she 

 married in 1802. The charm of her conversation 

 and manners, her bright wit, and above all hei 

 goodness made her the queen of a group that 

 numbered many of the most distinguished men in 

 Paris. The Restoration brought her the great grief 

 of long separation from her son, who had been aide- 

 de-camp to Napoleon. She died in Paris, 16th April 

 1836. Later novels were fimilie et Alphonse ( 1799) ; 

 Charles et Marie ( 1801 ), a delightful story, some- 

 thing in Fanny Burney's manner, and coloured 

 throughout by English impressions ; Eugene de 

 Rothelin (1808), an exquisite piece of work, its 

 hero a Grandison without insipidity ; Eugenie et 

 Mathilde. (1811), her longest and best sustained 

 story, in which we find close traces of her own 

 history ; and La Comtesse de Fargy ( 1822 ). Madame 

 de Souza was a product of the best side of the 18th 

 century, and she helps us to understand the polite- 

 ness, the harmonionsness, the taste, the reticence 

 all that was noble and exquisite in the old 

 regime. See Patin's Melanges ( 1 840 ) and Sainte- 

 Beuve's Portraits de Femmes. 



Sovereign, in Politics, the person or body of 

 persons in whom the supreme executive and legis- 

 lative power of a state is vested. In limited 

 monarchies sovereignty is in a qualified sense 

 ascribed to the king, who, though the supreme 

 magistrate, is not the sole legislator. A state in 

 which the legislative authority is not trammelled 

 by any foreign power is called a sovereign state. 

 See GOVERNMENT; and for the 20s. piece, see 

 POUND. 



Sowerby, JAMES (1757-1822), was a native of 

 Lambeth, who commenced as a portraitist and 

 miniaturist, bnt now is remembered by his English 

 Botany, or Coloured Figures of all the Plants 

 Natives of Great Britain (36 vols. 1792-1807; new 

 ed. 11 vols. 1863-72), the descriptions being written 

 by Sir J. E. Smith, M.D. Other works dealt with 

 Fungi, Conchology, and Mineralogy. Three sons 

 who followed in their father's footsteps were James 

 de Carle Sowerby ( 1787-1871 ), George Brettingham 

 Sowerby ( 1788-1854), and Charles Edward Sowerby 

 (1795-1842); and a son of the second was also 

 George Brettingham Sowerby ( 1812-84), the author 

 of many illustrated works on natural history. 



Sowerby Bridge, a manufacturing town in 

 the West Riding oF Yorkshire, on the Calder, 3 

 miles SW. of Halifax. It has a town-hall (1857) 

 and manufactures of worsted and cotton, oilcloth, 

 chemicals, iron, &c. Tillotson was a native of the 

 parish. Pop. ( 1851 ) 4365 ; ( 1891 ) 10,408. 



Sowing-machines. Formerly sowing was 

 always performed by scattering the seeds from th* 

 hand over the prepared surface of the soil. This 

 mode, distinguished as hand-sowing, is still em- 

 ployed in many places, especially on smaller hold- 

 ings and in garden husbandry. In the United 

 States there are broadcast-sowers carried in the 

 hand, in which a mechanism turned by a crank 

 expels the seed from the receptacle very evenly. 

 In the more extensive operations of the farm it 

 has been very much superseded by the use of sow- 

 ing-machines of various kinds drawn by horses 

 the broadcast sowing-machine, the drilling- 

 machine, and the dibbling-machine. The first is 



