Secret Chambers and Hiding Places

s even within the walls of his own house, it is no matter of wonder that the castles and mansions of th

g-places in our ancient buildings owe their origin to religious persecution, particularly during the reign of Elizabeth, when

aw was enforced, particularly against seminarists, whose chief object was, as was generally believed, to stir up their disciples in England against the Protestant Queen. An Act was passed prohibiting a member of the Church of Rome from celebrating the rites of his religion on pain of forfeiture for the first offence, a year's impr

ed before the door of a house in Gray's Inn Field

ainst all professors of the ancient faith. In the mansions of the old Roman Catholic families we often find an apartment in a secluded part of the house or garret in the roof named "the chapel," where religious rites could be performed with the utmos

sts' holes," were invented and constructed by the Jesuit Nicholas Owen, a servant of Father Garnet, who devoted t

Vita et Mors

ese as to make them most unlike what they really were. Moreover, he kept these places so close a secret with himself that he would never disclose to another the place of concealment of any Catholic. He alone was both their architect and their builder, working at them with inexhaustible industry and labour, for generally the thickest walls h

rocedure upon these occasions-how the search-party would bring with them skilled carpenters and masons and try every possible expedient, from systematic measurements and soundings to bodily tearing down the panelling and pulling up the floors. It was not an uncommon thing for a rigid search to last a fortnight and for the

he arrest of Owen, knowing his skill in constructing hiding-places, and the innumerable number of these dark holes which he had schemed for hiding priests 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

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 th