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The concealed entrance to a priest hole in Partingdale House, Middlesex (in the right column)

A priest hole is the term given to hiding places for priests built into many of the principal Roman Catholic houses of England during the period when Roman Catholics were persecuted by law in England, from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1558.

The measures put in force shortly after Elizabeth's accession became much harsher after the rising in the North and numerous other plots, and in particular the utmost severity of the law was enforced against seminary priests. 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 Roman 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 said Mass there the month previously. Laws against seminary priests and "recusants" were enforced with the greatest severity after the Gunpowder Plot episode during James I's reign.

It was not uncommon for the castles and mansions of England to have some precaution in the event of a surprise, such as a secret means of concealment or escape that could be used at a moment's notice. However, under the persecutory laws the number of secret chambers and hiding-places increased in the houses of the old Roman Catholic families. These often took the form of apartments or chapels in secluded parts of the houses or in the roof where Mass could be celebrated with the utmost privacy, and nearby 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.

Many are attributed to a Jesuit laybrother, Nicholas Owen, who devoted the greater part of his life to constructing these places to protect the lives of persecuted priests. They were sometimes built, as in East Riddlesden Hall, as an offshoot from a chimney or behind panelling, for example in Ripley Castle, Ripley, North Yorkshire.

"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."

Sometimes a priest could die in the hole from starvation or not being able to breathe.

How effectually priests' holes baffled the exhaustive searches of the "pursuivants," or priest-hunters, is 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 uncommon for a rigid search to last a fortnight and for the "pursuivants" to go away empty handed, while 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 episode of the Gunpowder Plot, Nicholas Owen himself was seized at Hindlip Hall, Worcestershire, taken to the Tower of London and tortured to death on the rack.

Current entertainment reference: TV series "Midsomer Murders" (BBC) -- Episode #46 (Epguides --http://www.epguides.com/MidsomerMurders/) In the episode entitled "Vixen's Run," a Priest-Hole is discovered behind a full-length mirror in the search for legendary missing emeralds.

• Religion in the United Kingdom
• Penal law
• English Roman Catholic parish histories
• Passetto

• Secret Chambers and Hiding Places, by Allan Fea, an eText at Project Gutenberg, from the introduction to which this article is derived.