Worcestershire, from information given to the Government by Catesby's
servant Bates. Cecil, who was well aware of Owen's skill in
constructing hiding-places, wrote exultingly: "Great joy was
caused all through the kingdom by the arrest of Owen, knowing
his skill in constructing hiding-places, and the innumerable
number of these dark holes which he had schemed for hiding priests
throughout the kingdom." He hoped that "great booty of priests"
might be taken in consequence of the secrets Owen would be made
to reveal, and directed that first he should "be coaxed if he
be willing to contract for his life," but that "the secret is
to be wrung from him." The horrors of the rack, however, failed
in its purpose. His terrible death is thus briefly recorded by
the Governor of the Tower at that time: "The man is dead--he
died in our hands"; and perhaps it is as well the ghastly details
did not transpire in his report.

The curious old mansion Hindlip Hall (pulled down in the early
part of the last century) was erected in 1572 by John Abingdon, or
Habington, whose son Thomas (the brother-in-law of Lord Monteagle)
was deeply involved in the numerous plots against the reformed
religion. A long imprisonment in the Tower for his futile efforts
to set Mary Queen of Scots at liberty, far from curing the dangerous
schemes of this zealous partisan of the luckless Stuart heroine,
only kept him out of mischief for a time. No sooner had he obtained
his freedom than he set his mind to work to turn his house in
Worcestershire into a harbour of refuge for the followers of
the older rites. In the quaint irregularities of the masonry
free scope was given to "Little John's" ingenuity; indeed, there
is every proof that some of his masterpieces were constructed
here. A few years before the "Powder Plot" was discovered, it