iron chair, a quaint old brass lamp, and some manuscripts of the Montague family.  The Cowdray tradition says that the fifth Viscount was concealed in this hiding-place for a considerable period, owing to some dark crime he is supposed to have committed, though he was generally believed to have fled abroad.  Secret nocturnal interviews took place between Lord Montague and his wife in “My Lady’s Walk,” an isolated spot in Cowdray Park.  The Montagues, now extinct, are said to have been very chary with reference to their Roman Catholic forefathers, and never allowed the secret chamber to be shown.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See History of a Great English House.]

A weird story clings to the ruins of Minster Lovel Manor House, Oxfordshire, the ancient seat of the Lords Lovel.  After the battle of Stoke, Francis, the last Viscount, who had sided with the cause of Simnel against King Henry VII., fled back to his house in disguise, but from the night of his return was never seen or heard of again, and for nearly two centuries his disappearance remained a mystery.  In the meantime the manor house had been dismantled and the remains tenanted by a farmer; but a strange discovery was made in the year 1708.  A concealed vault was found, and in it, seated before a table, with a prayer-book lying open upon it, was the entire skeleton of a man.  In the secret chamber were certain barrels and jars which had contained food sufficient to last perhaps some weeks; but the mansion having been seized by the King, soon after the unfortunate Lord Lovel is supposed to have concealed himself, the probability is that, unable to regain his liberty, the neglect or treachery of a servant or tenant brought about this tragic end.

A discovery of this nature was made in 1785 in a hidden vault at the foot of a stone staircase at Brandon Hall, Suffolk.

Kingerby Hall, Lincolnshire, has a ghostly tradition of an unfortunate occupant of the hiding-hole near a fireplace being intentionally fastened in so that he was stifled with the heat and smoke; the skeleton was found years afterwards in this horrible death-chamber.

Bayons Manor, in the same county, has some very curious arrangements for the sake of secretion and defence.  There is a room in one of the barbican towers occupying its entire circumference, but so effectually hidden that its existence would never be suspected.  In two of the towers are curious concealed stairs, and approaching “the Bishop’s Tower” from the outer court or ballium, part of a flight of steps can be raised like a drawbridge to prevent sudden intrusion.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Burke’s Visitation of Seats, vol. i.]

A contributor to that excellent little journal The Rambler, unfortunately now extinct, mentions another very strange and weird device for security.  “In the state-room of my castle,” says the owner of this death-trap, “is the family shield, which on a part being touched, revolves, and a flight of steps becomes visible.  The first, third, fifth, and all odd steps are to be trusted, but to tread any of the others is to set in motion some concealed machinery which causes the staircase to collapse, disclosing a vault some seventy feet in depth, down which the unwary are precipitated.”