Another Builder of "Priest Holes" or "Hides" in England

When I discussed the Stuart-era Catholic Martyrs with Deal Hudson on his Church and Culture program, we highlighted Saint Nicholas Owen, the Jesuit lay-brother, tortured to death by English authorities in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. We spoke of him as the great engineer and builder of numerous "priest holes" or "hides" in Recusant houses in England. 

There was, however, another great engineer and builder of these hiding places, Father Richard Holtby, SJ (1553–1640). He worked mostly in Yorkshire and the 1885-1900 Dictionary of National Biography has a quite a detailed entry about his life and mission to Catholics in the Recusant era, written by Thompson Cooper (who was an expert in the Mason-Gurney system of shorthand!). 

After studying at both Cambridge and Oxford (where he studied with the future martyr Alexander Briant at Hart Hall*) Holtby left England and was received into the Catholic Church after arriving at Douai to study at the English College in August 1577:

He was ordained priest at Cambrai 29 March 1578. A year later he was sent to English mission, and he laboured with great zeal in the northern counties. In 1581 Father Edmund Campion [Saint!] paid him a visit, and while staying in his house composed the famous ‘Decem Rationes,’ and urged him to join the Society of Jesus. Holtby accordingly went in the following spring to Paris, where he was admitted into the society in 1583, and he passed his novitiate at Verdun. After spending four years in the study of theology in the university of Pont-à-Mousson, he was appointed about 1587 superior of the Scotch College there. The father-general, Aquaviva, sent him back to England in 1589. In 1603 he was professed of the four vows. After the execution of Father Henry Garnett he was appointed superior or vice-prefect of the English mission, and during his three years’ tenure of that office he appears to have resided in London.

After some controversy with the archpriest George Blackwell on whether or not Catholics could take James I's new Oath of Allegiance, he left London. Here are some of Cooper's comments on Father Holtby's priest holes and other efforts:

He was a skillful mechanic, and constructed many cleverly contrived hiding-places for the persecuted priests. He could also ply the needle to make vestments and altar-cloths. . . . He died in the Durham district on 14 May (O.S.) 1640. ‘Of no other English Jesuit,’ remarks Dr. Jessopp, ‘can it be said that he exercised his vocation in England for upwards of fifty years, and that, too, with extraordinary effect and ceaseless activity, without once being thrown into gaol or once falling into the hands of pursuivants; and quietly died in is bed in extreme old age.’

Father Holtby also contributed to the history of recusancy and persecution in England, according to Cooper:

His works are: ‘On the Persecution in the North,’ 1594 manuscript at Stonyhurst College, printed by Morris in ‘Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers,’ iii. 103-219, and partially printed in Dodd’s 'Church History,’ ed. Tierney, iii. 75-148. and ‘Account of Three Martyrs’ (namely Page, Lambton, and Waterson, priests), manuscript at Stonyhurst College; printed by Morris in ‘Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers,’ iii. 220-30.

How remarkable that he was able to serve the Catholics of England for so many years, especially with his connections to martyrs like Saint Alexander Briant and Saint Edmund Campion!

*Hart Hall, now Hertford College, was for a time a refuge for recusant Catholics under Philip Randall, its principal from 1549 to 1556. John Donne was a student there (when he was Catholic!) in 1583/4.

Randall died on March 11, 1599 and was buried at St. Peter-in-the-East, now the Library of St. Edmund Hall.