no man was secure from spies and traitors even within the walls
of his own house, it is no matter of wonder that the castles and
mansions of the powerful and wealthy were usually provided with
some precaution in the event of a sudden surprise--_viz._
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 our ancient buildings owe their origin to religious
persecution, particularly during the reign of Elizabeth, when the
most stringent laws and oppressive burdens were inflicted upon
all persons who professed the tenets of the Church of Rome.

In the first years of the virgin Queen'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 within
their private dwelling-houses; but after the Roman Catholic rising
in the north and numerous other Popish 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 the Protestant Queen. 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.[1] 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 Church of Rome, both
should suffer death, as for high treason.

[Footnote 1: In December, 1591, a priest was hanged before the
door of a house in Gray's Inn Fields for having there said Mass