Owen, Lewis

, a controversial writer against the Jesuits, was born in Merionethshire in 1572, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford, which he left without taking a degree, “having,” as Wood says, “some petty employment bestowed on him.” He afterwards went to the continent, and entered into the society of the Jesuits in Spain, but discovering that their conduct savoured more of worldly policy than true religion, he made use of the information he had picked up among them to expose their intrigues. With this view he published, 1. “The Running Register; recording a true relation of the state of the English colleges, seminaries, and cioysters of all forraigne parts. Together with a brief and compendious discourse of the lives, practices, couzenage, impostures and deceits of all our English monks, friars, Jesuits, and seminarie priests in general,” Lond. 1626. This curious book (of which some extracts are given in the “Restituta,” vol. I. p. 141) abounds with anecdotes of those English Roman catholics who had fled for refuge to the foreign seminaries. 2. “The unmasking of all popish monks, friars, and Jesuits; or, a treatise of their genealogy, beginnings, proceedings, and present state,” &c. ibid. 1628, 4to. 3. “Speculum Jesuiticum, or the Jesuit’s Looking-glass; wherein they may behold Ignatius (their patron) his progress, their own pilgrimage,” &c. ibid. 1629, 4to. To this is added a list of all their colleges, the number of their fellows, &c. This was reprinted in sir Edward Sandys’s “Europe Speculum.” Owen was living in 1629, as appears by the date of his work, but we have no information of what became of him afterwards. ²