Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/271

Rh famous as the constructor of hiding-places, must not be confused with Captain Hugh Owen, the friend of the Jesuits, employed by the Spaniards in the Low Countries. Particulars of his death in the Tower of London are terrible in the extreme. Captured at Hendlip, he was conveyed to the Tower, and there, after being severely tortured, died on March 2, 1606. His enemies gave out that he had committed suicide. Owen, they have recorded, 'murthered himself in the Tower.' With this theory Dr. Gardiner agrees, when he declares that 'his (Owen's) fear lest the torture should be repeated worked upon his mind to such an extent that, on the following day, he committed suicide.'

In justice, however, to Owen's memory, it should be emphatically stated that there is nothing whatever to lead us to suppose that he destroyed himself. The evidence, indeed, is all the other way. He died, it appears, of internal injuries received during the tortures to which he was submitted.

Before being put to the torture, Owen denied all knowledge of the Plot, and refused to say a word that would injure, or could be construed to injure, either Oldcorne or Garnet. It is probable, however, that he knew something about the Plot;