St. Nicholas Owen SJ (1560? – 1606)

Nicholas Owen was a Jesuit brother whose skills as a mason and carpenter saved an unknown number of priests from capture as they went round Britain in the days when it was illegal to be a priest, and high treason to be a Jesuit. Clearly the seeds of what he afterwards became were sown at home, for his father was a carpenter, two of his brothers became priests, and the third brother printed Catholic books in secret.

Nicholas acted as Edmund Campion's servant during his mission in England. He was arrested for speaking out in Campion's defence, but was subsequently released. Then in 1587, Henry Garnet, the provincial of the English Jesuits employed him, to build hiding-places. When he went to a house, he would work publicly as a carpenter during the day, to establish his credentials with the servants; then at night he worked alone building a "priests' hole". Some of the hiding places he built could hold as many as six to ten people. Some of these were concealed within hidden rooms, others were hiding places inside hidden chambers in secret rooms. Some may be hidden yet, or were constructed in houses that have now been demolished, without ever being discovered. Remarkably he almost always managed to provide an emergency exit for his hiding places.

He probably joined the Society, as a non-ordained member, in the course of 1588. There is a letter dated in that year in the archives in Rome from Father Garnet to the Jesuit General, asking if a "carpenter" might enter the Society. He was arrested again in 1594 along with Garnet, but was released as he was thought to be unimportant. But the intelligence service of the English government was excellent, and in the aftermath of the "Gunpowder Plot" when he and other Jesuits took refuge at Hinlip Hall near Worcester, in early 1606, information.

about two of the priests was passed to the sheriff by a betrayer. The house was carefully searched, and the pursuers found no less than 13 hiding places. Nicholas and another lay brother were discovered only when, after four days in concealment, they came out because they had no food in their hiding-place. They tried to pretend that they were the priests whom the searchers were after, but to no avail, and Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne were found a day or so later.
Owen was horribly tortured, though he had a hernia, and hernia victims were supposedly exempt from torture. But the government thought it imperative to know where the hiding-places were, and no holds were barred. He was hung up by his wrists for five to seven hours a day, several days in succession.

When that failed to work they put weights on his feet, but the only names that passed his lips were those of Jesus and Mary. Eventually the body could stand no more, and his intestines burst out on the floor. So “Little John”, as they affectionately nicknamed him, died, and his secrets with him.

from Fr. Nick King SJ, Jesuit Companions, The Southern Cross and CB Publishing, Cape Town