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Priest HoleA priest hole is the term given to hiding places for priests built into many of the principal Middle Ages Roman Catholic houses of England. Most are attributed to a Jesuit, Nicholas Owen, who devoted the greater part of his life to constructing these places to protect the lives of persecuted Roman Catholic priests. During the Middle Ages the castles and mansions of the powerful and wealthy in England were usually provided with some precaution in the event of a sudden surprise, such as a secret means of concealment or escape that could be used at a moment's notice; but the majority of secret chambers and hiding-places in such ancient buildings owe their origin to religious persecution, particularly during the reign of Elizabeth I, when the most stringent laws and oppressive burdens were inflicted upon all persons who preofessed Catholicism. In the first years of the Elizabeth's reign all who clung to the older forms of the Catholic faith were mercifully connived at, so long as they solemnised their own religious rites in private; but after the Roman Catholic rising in the north and numerous other plots, the utmost severity of the law was enforced, particularly against seminarists, whose chief object was, as was generally believed, to stir up their disciples in England against Protestantism. 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 imprisonment for the second, and imprisonment for life for the third. All those who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy were called "recusants" and were guilty of high treason. A law was also enacted which provided that if any "Papist" should convert a Protestant to the Catholicism, both should suffer death, for high treason. In December, 1591, a priest was hanged before the door of a house in Gray's Inn Fields for having there said Mass the month previously. Laws against seminary priests and "recusants" were enforced with the greatest severity after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, during James I's reign In the mansions of the old Roman Catholic families in England are found apartments - chapels - in secluded parts of the houses or in the roof where religious rites could be performed with the utmost privacy, and close handy was usually an artfully contrived hiding-place, not only for the officiating priest to slip into in case of emergency, but also where the vestments, sacred vessels, and altar furniture could be put away at a moment's notice. "With incomparable skill Owen knew how to conduct priests to a place of safety along subterranean passages, to hide them between walls and bury them in impenetrable recesses, and to entangle them in labyrinths and a thousand windings. But what was much more difficult of accomplishment, he so disguised the entrances to these as to make them most unlike what they really were. Moreover, he kept these places so close a secret that he would never disclose to another the place of concealment of any Catholic. He alone was both their architect and their builder." How effectually priests' holes baffled the exhaustive searches of the "pursuivants," or priest-hunters, has been shown by contemporary accounts of the searches that took place frequently in suspected houses. Search parties 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 "pursuivants" to go away empty handed, while perhaps the object of the search was hidden the whole time within a wall's thickness of his pursuers, half starved, cramped and sore with prolonged confinement, and almost afraid to breathe, lest the least sound should throw suspicion upon the particular spot where he lay immured. After the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, Owen was arrested at Hindlip Hall, Worcestershire. See also External link
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