four days, leaving the mistress and her servants free. The yet
unbetrayed traitor stayed after the searchers were gone. As soon
as the doors of the house were made fast, the mistress came to
call me, another four days buried Lazarus, from what would have
been my tomb, had the search continued a little longer. For I
was all wasted and weakened as well with hunger as with want
of sleep and with having to sit so long in such a narrow space.
After coming out I was seen by the traitor, whose treachery was
still unknown to us. He did nothing then, not even to send after
the searchers, as he knew that I meant to be off before they
could be recalled."

The Wisemans had another house at North End, a few miles to the
south-east of Dunmow. Here were also "priests' holes," one of
which (in a chimney) secreted a certain Father Brewster during
a rigid search in December, 1593.[1]

[Footnote 1: _State Papers_, Dom. (Eliz.), December, 1593.
See also Life of Father John Gerard, p. 138.]

Great Harrowden, near Wellingborough, the ancient seat of the Vaux
family, was another notorious sanctuary for persecuted recusants.
Gerard spent much of his time here in apartments specially
constructed for his use, and upon more than one occasion had to
have recourse to the hiding-places. Some four or five years after
his experiences at Braddocks he narrowly escaped his pursuers in
this way; and in 1605, when the "pursuivants" were scouring the
country for him, as he was supposed to be privy to the Gunpowder
Plot, he owed his life to a secret chamber at Harrowden. The
search-party remained for nine days. Night and day men were posted