of Holt Castle, a justice of the peace, with the most minute orders, which are very funny:  “In the search,” says the document, “first observe the parlour where they use to dine and sup; in the last part of that parlour it is conceived there is some vault, which to discover, you must take care to draw down the wainscot, whereby the entry into the vault may be discovered.  The lower parts of the house must be tried with a broach, by putting the same into the ground some foot or two, to try whether there may be perceived some timber, which if there be, there must be some vault underneath it.  For the upper rooms you must observe whether they be more in breadth than the lower rooms, and look in which places the rooms must be enlarged, by pulling out some boards you may discover some vaults.  Also, if it appear that there be some corners to the chimneys, and the same boarded, if the boards be taken away there will appear some secret place.  If the walls seem to be thick and covered with wainscot, being tried with a gimlet, if it strike not the wall but go through, some suspicion is to be had thereof.  If there be any double loft, some two or three feet, one above another, in such places any person may be harboured privately.  Also, if there be a loft towards the roof of the house, in which there appears no entrance out of any other place or lodging, it must of necessity be opened and looked into, for these be ordinary places of hovering (hiding).”

The house was searched from garret to cellar without any discovery being made, and Mrs. Abingdon, feigning to be angry with the searchers, shut herself up in her bedroom day and night, eating and drinking there, by which means through the secret tube she fed Father Garnet and another Jesuit father.  But after a protracted search of ten days, these two men surrendered themselves, pressed, it is said, “for the need of air rather than food, for marmalade and other sweetmeats were found in their den, and they had warm and nutritive drinks passed to them by the reed through the chimney,” as already described.  This historic mansion, it may be added, on account of its elevated position, was capitally adapted as a place of concealment, for “it afforded the means of keeping a watchful look-out for the approach of the emissaries of the law, or of persons by whom it might have been dangerous for any skulking priest to be seen, supposing his reverence to have gone forth for an hour to take the air.”

Another important instance of a strange room is that existing at Ingatestone Hall, in Essex, which was, in years gone by, a summer residence belonging to the Abbey of Barking.  It came with the estate into possession of the family of Petre in the reign of Henry VIII., and continued to be occupied as their family seat until the latter half of the last century.  In the south-east corner of a small room attached to what was probably the host’s bedroom, there was discovered some years ago a mysterious hiding