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
was a hanging matter for a priest to be caught celebrating the
Mass. Yet with the facilities at Hindlip he might do so with
comfort, with every assurance that he had the means of evading
the law. The walls of the mansion were literally riddled with
secret chambers and passages. There was little fear of being
run to earth with hidden exits everywhere. Wainscoting, solid
brickwork, or stone hearth were equally accommodating, and would
swallow up fugitives wholesale, and close over them, to "Open,
Sesame!" again only at the hider's pleasure.

CHAPTER II

HINDLIP HALL

The capture of Father Garnet and "Little John" with two others,
Hall and Chambers, at Hindlip, as detailed in a curious manuscript
in the British Museum, gives us an insight into the search-proof
merits of Abingdon's mansion. The document is headed: "_A true
discovery of the service performed at Hindlip, the house of Mr.
Thomas Abbingdon, for the apprehension of Mr. Henry Garnet, alias
Wolley, provincial of the Jesuits, and other da