Primary Contributors:
Cultures of Knowledge
Robert Southwell, by Godfrey Kneller. c. 1679. (King’s Weston House, Bristol; source of image: Wikimedia Commons)
Robert Southwell (1635–1702)
The listing of letters provided in this catalogue is not complete and has been identified as an EMLO Starter Catalogue. Scholars and students who are interested in working with EMLO to bring it to completion are warmly invited to be in touch.
Robert Southwell was a diplomat, politician, and president of the Royal Society. The Southwells, second-generation Irish settlers, were wealthy protestant Royalists holding lands in county Cork. The threat posed to such families by the English revolution and Irish Rebellion of 1641 perhaps explains why the young Southwell was sent to England and, thereafter, to the continent for his education. He returned home after the Restoration, having met luminaries such as Athanasius Kircher, and used the dowry from his marriage to purchase a clerkship to the privy council. In 1665, he was appointed emissary to Portugal, and helped to negotiate the 1668 Treaty of Lisbon.
This rapid advance through the diplomatic circles of Europe paved the way for a series of stellar political appointments. Southwell was made ambassador to Brussels in 1671; elected to Parliament as representative for Penryn shortly afterwards; and named secretary for the commission of prizes one year later. He succeeded to the position of vice-admiralty of Munster following the death of his father in 1671 and subsequently was appointed Commissioner for the Excise. He purchased a country estate at King’s Weston, near Bristol, and became increasingly preoccupied with domestic duties, including—as he would dwell on at length in his letters to his cousin and confidant William Petty (1623–1687)—the education of his sons.
Despite his attitude to Catholicism resembling that of any member of the protestant Irish aristocracy, Southwell was smeared in the House of Lords for having suppressed information concerning the fictitious Popish Plot. Displaying characteristic caution, Southwell concluded that the best course of action during this period of anti-Irish hysteria would be to keep his head down, and he sold his clerkship. That his reputation did not suffer as a result of this skirmish is demonstrated by the fact that he was soon sent on another diplomatic mission, to Brandenburg; this appointment would prove particularly politically auspicious, as it put him in contact with William of Orange, the future king.
Southwell’s son Edward joined forces with William of Orange shortly after the invasion in 1688. Southwell was soon appointed by William as principal secretary to Ireland, which was then in the grips of the Williamite Wars. Despite this turmoil, Southwell’s duties seem to have been minimal, and he was back in London by 1690. That year, he was elected president of the Royal Society, into which he had been inducted nearly thirty years previously by his long-time friend Robert Boyle. He retained this post for five years, achieving annual re-election throughout: the final testament to his lifetime of skilful governance. He died at King’s Weston in 1702.
Partners and Additional Contributors
EMLO Digital Fellow Georgie Newson created metadata in June 2024 to describe 193 letters Southwell exchanged with his cousin and friend William Petty from the edition edited by H. E. W. Petty-Fitzmaurice and published in 1928 (with a reprint in 1967; for further details, please see below). To date, descriptions of 244 letters (plus eight duplicate records) have been brought together in this ‘starter catalogue’ through the work of the Cultures of Knowledge research project from the correspondences in EMLO of:
Elias Ashmole, contributed by Cultures of Knowledge.
Bodleian Card Catalogue: the ‘Index of Literary Correspondence’, contributed by Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and Cultures of Knowledge.
Robert Boyle, from The Correspondence of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe, 6 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001), with metadata supplied by Electronic Enlightenment Project, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
Early Letters of the Royal Society, London, contributed by The Royal Society, London.
Edmond Halley, contributed by Cultures of Knowledge.
Christiaan Huygens, contributed by ePistolarium, CKCC project, Huygens ING, The Hague.
Martin Lister, contributed by Anna Marie Roos.
Henry Oldenburg, contributed by Cultures of Knowledge, based on The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. and tr. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, 13 vols (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press; London: Mansel; London: Taylor & Francis, 1965–86).
William Petty, contributed by Cultures of Knowledge.
Thanks are due to Georgie Newson for the preparation of this introductory text.
