Robert South

High Church theologian, born in London, UK. He studied at Oxford, was ordained in 1658, and in 1660 was appointed public orator of Oxford. His vigorous sermons, full of mockery of the Puritans, delighted the restored Royalists. He became domestic chaplain to Clarendon, prebendary of Westminster in 1663, canon of Christ Church in 1670, and rector of Islip in 1678, but his outspokenness prevented any further preferment.

Robert South (September 4, 1634 - July 8, 1716), was an English churchman. He was the son of Robert South, a London merchant, and Elizabeth Berry.

He was born at Hackney, Middlesex, and was educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church College, Oxford.

On August 10, 1660 he was chosen public orator of the university, and in 1661 domestic chaplain to Lord Clarendon. In March 1663 he was made prebendary of Westminster, and shortly afterwards he received from his university the degree of D.D. In 1676 he was appointed chaplain to Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, ambassador-extraordinary to the king of Poland, and he sent an interesting account of his visit to Edward Pococke in a letter, dated Dantzic, December 16, 1677, which was printed along with South's Posthumous Works in 1717.

Owing, it is said, to a personal grudge, South in 1693 published Animadversions on Dr Sherlock's Book, entitled a Vindication of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity, in which the views of William Sherlock were anonymously attacked with sarcastic bitterness. Sherlock published a Defence in 1694, to which South replied in Tritheism Charged upon Dr Sherlock's New Notion of the Trinity, and the Charge Made Good. During the greater part of the reign of Anne South remained comparatively quiet, but in 1710 he ranked himself among the partisans of Henry Sacheverell.

South had a vigorous style and his sermons had homely and humorous appeal. He published a large number of single sermons, and they appeared in a collected form in 1692 in six volumes, reaching a second edition in his lifetime in 1715. His Opera posthuma latina, including his will, his Latin poems, and his orations while public orator, with memoirs of his life, appeared in 1717. The contemporary notice of South by Anthony Wood in his Athenae is strongly hostile, said to be due to a jest made by South at Wood's expense.

South gave orders that his ashes should rest near those of his Master Busby at Westminster Abbey. At the south wall of the sanctuary stands a large monument of white marble with a reclining figure, right arm on a cushion, and hand on a skull, and a closed book in the left.