‘Master Illusionist’ (Tower of London Is Hallowed for the Blood St. Nicholas Owen Spilled There)

I made my way through the crowds on the bank of the River Thames and stood in line to buy my ticket for the Tower of London tour.

Yes, the Tower — that infamous prison that held martyrs such as St. Thomas More.

William the Conqueror, who commissioned the Tower in 1078, intended it to protect the city against invaders.

Most people in line with me at the ticket booth were probably hoping to catch a glimpse of the Crown Jewels. I, on the other hand, came to pay homage to the martyrs’ crowns earned here at all too great a price.

The usual visitor is unaware of the centuries of repression British Catholics suffered during the “Penal Times.” Between 1559 and 1829, the British government imposed a series of laws forbidding Catholics from practicing their faith. Henry VIII’s apostasy, treachery and moral inconsistency helped create hundreds of martyrs for the Church. Subsequent rulers of Britain offered more of the same.

St. Nicholas Owen was one of many who suffered and died in the Tower. He was known as “Little John.” He was a tiny slip of a Jesuit, but, as the old hagiographies commonly attested, he was big of heart. Owen was slightly taller than a dwarf and suffered from a hernia and a badly set leg, fractured when a horse fell on him. On March 2, 1606, Nicholas Owen was tortured to death in the Tower of London. He had, in fact, already been here before — when he helped two Jesuit priests escape.

In 1588, Father Henry Garnet, superior of the English Jesuits, directed St. Nicholas to use his cabinetry and masonry skills to save people’s lives by creating “priest holes,” secret places designed to hide priests from the authorities. More than 100 examples of his work have been found throughout England, but many more will probably never be known.

At night, St. Nicholas would create small hiding places — trap doors, sliding doors, hidden crawl spaces and subterranean passages — in order to hide priests and other Catholic fugitives from priest hunters. He would use trompe l’oeil: perspective and many of the modern principles of stage illusion design that magicians often take for granted. Whenever St. Nicholas would design and build such hiding places, he would always begin with prayer and receive the Eucharist. Because of his incredible building skills, he was even able to help two Jesuit priests escape from the Tower.

It’s not strange to imagine why Catholic magicians, illusionists and escape artists consider him as important a patron as St. Don Bosco. Who better to be a patron than a man who could use illusion to fool the eye, break into prison, and help people escape?

Nicholas managed to evade anti-Catholic authorities until the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In 1606, he was arrested again in Worcestershire. He gave himself up without resisting in order to distract attention from two priests hiding nearby.

Despite it being illegal for him to be tortured (under English law the maimed were exempt from torture), he suffered on the rack until his death. He kept his secrets from his executioners and betrayed no one.

Father Gerard, one of the two men he helped escape from the Tower, once wrote: “I verily think no man can be said to have done more good of all those who labored in the English vineyard. He was the immediate occasion of saving the lives of many hundreds of persons, both ecclesiastical and secular.”

One particularly gruesome report stated that they tortured Owen “with such inhuman ferocity” that he became disemboweled.

The tour led through a maze of dark tunnels, and our guide offered sensationalist and titillating bits of sanitized history. No mention at all of the Penal Times. No mention of the Catholics who defended the Church only to be ruthlessly killed by people who had only a few years prior been Catholics themselves. The tourists in my group seem engrossed by the macabre details of the tortures carried out in the Tower, as portrayed by our tour guide — horrors that even in this jaded century would be considered crimes against humanity.

I felt the walls around me, though I was asked not to touch them. They were, after all, hallowed because of the blood of martyrs who died here.

“Is this where St. Nicholas Owen died?” I asked, hoping my question wasn’t obstreperous, but still hoping to witness to his sacrifice.

Without St. Nicholas Owen’s help, hundreds of British Catholics would have been deprived of the sacraments. In recognition of his sacrifice and his love of God, Nicholas Owen was canonized as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI on Oct. 25, 1970, their feast day.

Very few stops on my recent pilgrimage throughout Europe solicited such strong feelings from me. I had been to many sites made holy because of the lives of holy people, but I’d never been to a place of martyrdom. So many people were blessed with martyrs’ crowns in England and Wales because they never abandoned God or the Church. I won’t forget my visit to this place, so full of aching misery and the spiritual joy that ensued from it.

St. Nicholas Owen was one of many who suffered and died in the Tower. He was known as “Little John.” He was a tiny slip of a Jesuit, but, as the old hagiographies commonly attested, he was big of heart....On March 2, 1606, Nicholas Owen was tortured to death in the Tower of London. He had, in fact, already been here before — when he helped two Jesuit priests escape....Without St. Nicholas Owen’s help, hundreds of British Catholics would have been deprived of the sacraments. In recognition of his sacrifice and his love of God, Nicholas Owen was canonized as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI on Oct. 25, 1970, their feast day.

Which is followed shortly thereafter by another holiday based on events taking place in London just a scant year prior: November 5, also known as Guy Fawkes day.

In 1605, 13 young men planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament in what is now called "the Gunpowder Plot". The Gunpowder Plot came about after Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603. English Catholics, who had been persecuted under her rule, were bitterly disappointed when her successor, James I, who had a Catholic mother, failed to be more tolerant of their religion. Their leader Robert Catesby decided to blow up the Houses of Parliament, hoping to kill the King, the Prince of Wales, and the MPs who were making life difficult for Catholics.
Among 13 young men was Guy Fawkes, Britain's most notorious traitor and Roman Catholic convert. He was arrested in Parliament's cellar with 36 barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes was tried, convicted, and executed for treason.
Even now, four hundred years later, the reigning monarch only enters the Parliament once a year for the State Opening of Parliament. And before the opening, according to custom, the Yeomen of the Guard searches the cellars of the Palace of Westminster.
- from the thread Guy Fawkes in the U.S.

From the article:

In 1588, Father Henry Garnet, superior of the English Jesuits, directed St. Nicholas to use his cabinetry and masonry skills to save people’s lives by creating “priest holes,” secret places designed to hide priests from the authorities. More than 100 examples of his work have been found throughout England, but many more will probably never be known.

LONDON (CNS) -- A book bound in the skin of an executed Jesuit priest was to be auctioned in England.
The macabre, 17th-century book tells the story of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and is covered in the hide of Father Henry Garnet.
The priest, at the time the head of the Jesuits in England, was executed May 3, 1606, outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London for his alleged role in a Catholic plot to detonate 36 barrels of gunpowder beneath the British Parliament, an act that would have killed the Protestant King James I and other government leaders.
The book, "A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings Against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and His Confederates," contains accounts of speeches and evidence from the trials. It measures about 6 inches by 4 inches, comes in a wooden box and will be auctioned Dec. 2 by Wilkinson's Auctioneers in Doncaster, England.
Sid Wilkinson, the auctioneer, said: "The front cover is rather spooky because where the skin has mottled or crinkled there looks to be a bearded face.
"It is a curious thing, and we believe it to be taken from the skin of Henry Garnet," he told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview Nov. 28.
He added that it was common for the skins of executed criminals to be used to cover books about their lives, a process called anthropodermic binding.
"These things exist in history and they exist in museums as well," Wilkinson said. "This one has caught people's interest because they don't appear on the market very often.
"We have been in business a long time and, although we deal mostly in furniture, I have never seen anything like it," he said.
Wilkinson said the owner was an academic but declined to name him.
He said the book might be auctioned for hundreds or thousands of British pounds, but added: "It may not even sell. It is quite macabre and not to everyone's taste."
The book was made by Robert Barker, the king's printer, just months after Father Garnet's execution for his alleged involvement in a plot instigated after the king reneged on his promises to end the persecution of Catholics.
Father Garnet had been acquainted with the plotters and had heard their confessions but he always insisted he strongly opposed their designs and tried to stop them. He was convicted of treason and was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Father Garnet went to his death pleading his innocence. Members of the crowd prevented the executioner from cutting him down from the scaffold until he was dead. Others pulled on his legs to hasten his end so that he would not have to endure the ensuing horrors.
Father Garnet is not among the English martyrs of the Protestant Reformation who have been canonized or beatified.

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