Campion’s servant
Nicholas Owen was born in Oxford around 1562. His father was Walter Owen, a carpenter. Nicholas became an apprentice joiner.
The future saint served as Edmund Campion’s servant. Owen became known for protesting the innocence of Campion, who had been accused of treason. Owen was so vocal that he was also imprisoned.
After his release, he served the Jesuit provincial Fr Henry Garnet, visiting Catholic houses around the country with him. Owen would build very well constructed hiding places for priests.
Priest holes
To ensure that no one knew what he was building Owen would make a show of engaging in repairs in one part of the house during the day, and then surreptitiously work on building priest holes in the middle of the night.
In 1594, he accompanied another priest, Fr Gerard, to London to help him buy a house. But while they were there the pair were betrayed by a servant to a family for whom Owen had built a hiding place at the Broadoaks estate in Essex.
The authorities seized Owen and tortured him for information about the location of his other refuges for persecuted Catholics. He told them nothing and was eventually released. He helped Fr Gerard to escape from imprisonment in the tower of London by stringing a rope across a moat.
Gunpowder Plot
When the Gunpowder Plot was exposed in 1605, Owen became a source of suspicion again and the authorities began to hunt for him. He hid along with three Jesuits at Hindlip Hall in Worcestershire. When the hall was raided, with 100 men searching for them, they still failed to find the priest hole.
After eight days in hiding, Owen was forced to give himself up or starve to death. He told his captors that he was a priest in order to save Fr Garnet. Owen was tortured in the Tower until he eventually died on March 22, 1606.
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