Nicholas Owen

I know what you're going to say.

While Inspector Rock is hiding out, nursing his injuries and trying to figure out how to fight a corrupt police force, his mind wanders to a historical figure named Nicholas Owen.

Also known as Little John.

Exactly.

Nicholas Owen was an Elizabethan builder who constructed ingenious hidden compartments in grand manor houses, so-called priest holes.

Right.

These were used to hide outlawed Catholic priests from the Protestant authorities, saving hundreds of lives, including the famous Father John Girard.

You never know, though.

Like, they're still discovering Nicholas Owen priest holes and priest hides, right? I think 40 years ago or something, a new one was discovered in a home that had been there, people living in it for centuries, and they never knew that this existed.

So...

We could hold out hope that in some secret attic somewhere.

So, while historians may still regard him as somewhat of an oddity in his time, Grosseteste's insistence that empirical observation could inform theology paved the way for later scholastic and scientific advancements across Europe.

Jumping forward again to early seventeenth century England, we meet Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit whose skill set was not of the battlefield or politics but of concealment, engineering, and quiet defiance.

During Elizabeth I's reign, Catholic worship was forbidden under harsh penalties.

Yet priests continued their work clandestinely, and when they needed to hide themselves from persecution, it was Nicholas Owen who crafted intricate priest holes, hidden chambers within walls that could sustain a man for days, sometimes weeks.

He had a network of allies and hiding places set up for him across shires of England, all thanks to his loyal Catholic supporters who could hide him in secret rooms known as priest holes.

Those priest holes were designed by the ingenious Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit brother whose craftsmanship was legendary.

He built them into the walls and floors of houses owned by recusant families who refused to attend Church of England services.

At Boscobel House in Shropshire, for instance, Owen had constructed a small concealed chamber behind a panel that could be opened from outside only, a lifeline that would keep the king safe from any search party that might come looking.

In a time when most scholars were confined within scholastic frameworks, Grosseteste’s insistence on observation and experiment paved a way for a more empirical approach to understanding nature.

In a very different part of Britain and centuries later, we find Nicholas Owen, not as a military hero but as an engineer of clandestine religious life during the Elizabethan Reformation.

A Jesuit lay brother, he crafted over a thousand priest holes—concealed hiding places for Catholic clergy in homes that would otherwise have been hunted by English authorities.

The technical skill required was staggering.