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NOTES -AND QUERIES. [9* s. vra. JOLT 27, 1901.

claim acquaintance we fail to trace. In the intro- duction, however, we are told that many families of princely rank are not even inscribed in the Livre de Noblesse, and we also read of the rigorous censorship exercised a I'e'tranger over genealogical works.

Secret Chambers and Hiding Places. By Allan

Fea. (Bousfield & Co.)

THE subject of Mr. Fea's latest volume has, it may be supposed, commended itself to him in the course of the investigations he had to make in preparing his ' Flight of the King' (see 8 th S. xi. 398). Much of the ground he then traversed has at least had to be revisited. The subject he takes up is pleasantly antiquarian, and much of the information he sup- plies is new. It is true that legend and tradition are more frequently invoked than history, and that little personal interest clings to most of these places of refuge. What is the date of the earliest cannot be ascertained, and we are not absolutely sure, though the matter is of little importance, that a place of detention may not have been mistaken for an asylum. What we do know is that priests' holes and similar recesses or cavities sprang into use during the Elizabethan persecutions ; that they are naturally most frequent in the houses of the Roman Catholic gentry, with whom the protection of a seminary priest was a matter of religious loyalty and duty ; and that as the Roman Catholics were as a rule adherents of the Stuarts, the apart- ment, or preferably hole, that held a priest under Elizabeth might shelter a Royalist under Cromwell or a fugitive from Culloden under Hanoverian rule. Mr. Fea is at some pains to bring again before us the famous Jesuit Nicholas Owen, presumably a builder, known from his small stature as Little John, whose remarkable talents were exercised in stocking Roman Catholic mansions with secret chambers, in some of which he unavailingly sought shelter, and who was said by the authorities, in order to save them from the opprobrium of a death the result of their tortures, to have committed suicide. This hero, a servant to Garnet and Campion, and others of his order, had a genius for constructing these places and hiding them so skilfully as almost to defy detection. He was thus the means of saving the lives of very many priests and " recusants." Hind- lip Hall, a building which has now long disappeared, erected in 1572 by John Abington, or Habington, was the greatest triumph of Little John's ingenuity, and was a place of general shelter for priests. In the intricacies of its masonry and in its long corridors was a secret labyrinth, communicating with the open country by numerous ports of issue. To use words of which Mr. Fea is fond, its walls "were literally riddled with secret chambers and pas- sages. These did not serve to protect the inventor since, after a species of investment and siege, poor Owen and others were starved into surrender and carried off to London to meet their fate. Attempts here and elsewhere to feed the refugees through quills or tubes proved unavailing. Some two or three hundred places are dealt with by Mr. Fea, and of eighty of these excellent illustrations are supplied by the author. Priests' holes and secret chambers are naturally most abundant in the great centres of Roman Catholicism, but a few are found in Scot- la . n <J Aberdeenshire alone has six Wales, the Isle of Wight, and Guernsey. In one part of his book Mr. Fea traces the flight of the Young Pretender as he previously treated that of Charles II., though

at less length. He deals also with caverns and chambers occupied for the purpose of smuggling, with which at one time the Southern coast abounded. It has been maintained that there was scarcely a house of any importance in Deal that could not hide some portion of a cargo that had been " run." A special chapter is devoted to ' Mysterious Rooms, Deadly Pits, &c.' With some of these personal legends are concerned, but they are generally vague. It is, in fact, evident enough that secret chambers lose their raison d'etre when they are no longer secret, and the " great families" are no more inclined to disclose the mysteries of their houses, even when they know them, than they are to reveal the misdeeds or infamies of their ancestors. Mr. Fea has produced an interesting and readable book. The information he supplies is generally satisfactory, though he is sometimes vague, as when he says of a butt which, while apparently full of water, served as a shelter, "We understand such a butt is still in existence some- where in Yorkshire."

The Evangelists, Apostles, and Prophets connected with the Signs of the Zodiac, by J. M. Lawrence, is a booklet which shows considerable ingenuity, though we cannot be responsible for the author's conclusions.

THE REV. W. C. BOULTER, Norton Vicarage, Evesham, has spare copies of the following papers, and will give them to the earliest applicants who send name, address, and stamp :

History of Scoreby and the Blake Family. By Canon James Raine. Nine copies.

Extracts from the Parish Registers of Holy Trinity, Hull. By John Sykes, M.D. Nineteen copies.

Extracts from the Parish Registers of Arksey, near Doncaster. By John Sykes, M.D. Twelve copies.

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