Stumpingford Castle to see their friends at Preston-about the year 1580, this old hall was destroyed by the squire of that day, Benedict Preston. Exactly on the site he built a new and much larger house, the hall now occupied by our friend, Mr. George Augustus Preston. There were no hidingholes in the house that was pulled down. The wars of the Barons and the wars of the Roses had been only wars: they were not perpetual treacheries, and assassinations by law; so men got through them without any thing beyond the ordinary resources of refuge. But Benedict Preston lived in days which his forefathers and the Stumpyngfords never so much as dreamed of, poor men. They thought Christianity had fixed itself in England, and never for a moment supposed that the very duties divinely instituted for assisting men to heaven were to become, by a curious inversion, the pretence also for depriving them of life. Successive statutes, however, of the glorious queen, ending with the thirty-fifth year of her reign, brought complete destruction upon all convicted of professing and practising the true religion. So Benedict Preston, acting with plain common sense, determined to rebuild his house, and suit it to the times. Down came the old walls-stout old walls, stronger than Mr. Limewater will build you, if you order a house now; and there were found, as there always are found, old coins, from Ethelred downwards, bits of old swords, and Saxon gold ornaments, and plenty of Edwardian and Tudor rubbish, all which are lost to the world,-carent quia vate sacro. There was no Mechanics' Institute and Museum then at Stumpingford. And, to say the truth—and I am sorry to say it-there is some reason to believe that Benedict Preston himself did not think quite so much of those things as we now do in the Stumpingford branch of the Archæological Institute. When all was pulled down, and the ground made smooth, there appeared an Italian architect, about whom no one knew any thing, and the new house began to go up apace. Mr. Preston did not show his plans; but in them were provisions for not less than three comfortable hiding-holes-comfortable, that is to say, in comparison with the destiny that stood ready to meet any one who was caught in them. The workmen who built the house were not Stumpingford men, and when they had done they went away. The date 1580, over the entrance-doorway, is supposed to mark the year in which the house was completed. As we are going, by and by, to see one of those hiding-holes in use, let us go and see it beforehand. Preston Hall presents to you, immediately on your entrance, its hall, ample and lofty, with a great fireplace on the left-hand side, and at the other extremity a door, which opens at the foot of the great staircase. This staircase conducts you to a floor, upon which various chambers branch off on two sides of the great hall, which occupies the north-east side of the house and rises to the roof, and into a pleasant gallery, which looks into the hall, and commands its whole length. The gallery was, and is, panelled with oak. You would not observe any thing remarkable in the thickness of the wall as you entered from the landing at the top of the stairs. Nevertheless the wall is very thick to look at, when your attention is drawn to it; and if you touch the short panel which rises immediately from the plinth of the gallery at a particular spot, you will find that you can slide it away. When it is completely pushed to one side, it leaves an opening not much more than sufficient to allow one person to creep in. When you have crept in, you find yourself in a small closet, eight feet by four, and twenty feet high; into which light and air are conveyed by means of a false chimney, opening at the very top of the apartment. In broad day, there might be just light enough to read a good print; but we imagine that her most sacred majesty Elizabeth, or Burleigh, or Robert Cecil, or Walsingham, would not have thought it meet for their conveniences. Benedict and Alfred Preston were the only two sons of old Benedict Preston, as he was called: who, having witnessed the destruction of religion by Henry and Edward, its restoration under Mary, and its final depression under Elizabeth, had himself made no change during all that period in his duty to God and the Holy See. He remained very quiet at Preston Hall; never sat in the execrable House of Commons of that day; and, when the new religion was set up in the parishchurch, which his ancestor had rebuilt about a hundred years before, he, and all his household and family, heard Mass and received the Sacraments in a garret at home. His sons, Benedict and Alfred, grew up, therefore, without the smallest tincture of any of the varieties of misbelief, which even then gave the most promising earnest of the abundant harvest recently brought into the Registrar-General's office by Horace Mann, the friend of mankind. Old Benedict Preston survived till 1570. His eldest son, Benedict, succeeded him. Alfred, who had gone to Rome to obtain holy orders, which could not now be obtained in England, was still there at his father's death. And here we now propose to raise the curtain. CHAPTER II. IN WHICH WE RECEIVE A PEDLAR. NOVEMBER at Preston Hall is much like the Novembers in other places in the southern counties of England; that is to say, rather damp and dreary. But the Prestons have a fancy that their oaks, which are very fine, keep their foliage a long time. In fact, late into November they may be seen with a good deal of green remaining. They have an interest in this little matter which can scarcely be called fanciful. About the middle of November 1581, when, the tradition is, that the oaks were still showing very green, Benedict Preston and his wife, and two little children, were sitting in the withdrawing-room, as it was then called, in which we have already seen our friend Mr. George Augustus Preston, their present successor. There were no Joe Mantons nor Greeners in those days, and shooting flying was only not quite so far off as the electric telegraph. But Benedict Preston had had an otter-hunt that morning, which had ended successfully; and, refreshed with the stout exercise, he had come in, flung aside his sporting-clothes, and put himself into a suit becoming a country gentleman of that day for the short remainder of the evening; for they did not sit up late in those days. Just at this time the Duke of Anjou was in England, making proposals which, luckily for himself, came to nothing, of marriage with Elizabeth. We leave it to the divine pages of English history of that era to tell how she would and she would not; how she tried every Elizabethan dodge to get him to consent, that if, and when, he became her husband, he would go to her chapel with her, and would have none of his own, or at most a very little one, hidden quite out of sight in the mazes of the palace; how she put a ring on his finger, and by and by, not long after, sat up a whole night amid the bewailings, sham or real, of her women, expressive of popular horror against a Catholic match; how, next day, in the morning, she went to see the duke in his own apartment, and had a private talk with him, the particulars of which have not yet been told, or forged; how the duke, after the interview was over, was seen to fling her ring on the ground, and then pick it up again, bewailing himself, good man, on the general inconstancy of the female sex, particularly as existing in England. Let Rapin and Hume tell all this at full length under the year 1581. In this state of public affairs, the minds of the unfortunate Catholics of England, who suffered in every way, both from the exertions of their friends to assist them and the fixed purpose of Elizabeth and her ministers to exterminate them, turned with great feelings of relief to the prospect of a Catholic husband sharing the throne of Elizabeth. On the strength of these hopes we are told that many priests came over into the country. But the Catholics, as was often the case before and since, reckoned without their hostess. There is very good reason to doubt whether she ever intended to marry the Duke of Anjou at all; and it is perfectly certain that, marriage or no marriage, no favour was to be granted to the Catholics, and priests were simply to be hanged as usual. With a view, no doubt, of setting before the eyes of her intended husband, if he was so, the happy future which awaited him, she caused, during the time that he was with her in England, the saintly Edmond Campian of the Society of Jesus, and three others, to be put on their trials for their religion. It is true the law said they were guilty of treason. It might as well have said that they were guilty of arson, or killing sturgeon. News of this reached the Catholic homes throughout England, and saddened them. This is just the time when Benedict Preston is brought before the reader. They had not heard it yet at Preston Hall. As the shades of the evening stole on, and the time was just approaching for the hangings to be let fall before the window, and lights to be brought, a servant came in and said to Mr. Preston that a pedlar was at the door in the yard with knives and other pedlar's wares, and insisted on seeing the master of the house. Mr. Preston, surprised, and inquisitive as men are who live in daily possibility of misfortune, desired the servant to bring the pedlar into the house into the servants' hall, and leave him there. As soon as this was done, he entered the servants' hall himself. There the pedlar stood, with his box unslung and deposited on the floor. He was a fine well-grown man, not much beyond thirty, with a noble, intellectual, and grave countenance, as far as it could be perceived through a thick beard which covered his face and chin. As soon as Mr. Preston entered the room, the pedlar passed his hands over his head and behind his ears, and the whole beard and all the hair on his face dropped off, and displayed at once the full face of his brother. The brothers embraced each other in silence; for their emotion at meeting after so long separation, on their own soil, in such times, deprived them for the moment of the power of speaking. Benedict Preston spoke first. "There is no need of disguise now, my dear brother; all are Catholics in this house, and would give their lives for you; and here I hope you may stay in safety as long as you like." "Father Campian is to be tried the day after to-morrow," said Alfred Preston, "and others with him. There is not the smallest prospect of his escape. I have come here, and may be bringing mischief to our house." we will "Then let it come," said Benedict Preston; share it with you. We are loyal to the queen, and are ready to defend her and the kingdom. And she knows it. But as for not harbouring you, she might as well ask me to call her a Catholic." At which both brothers smiled pleasantly. "Come up-stairs, pedlar's pack and all. You need not put on that beard, however. It would frighten Apollonia to see you take it off. You've never yet seen her. But wait one moment." Mr. Preston stood at the servants'-hall door, and called for Stibbs, the butler. Stibbs came in. "This," said Mr. Preston, "is Father Alfred Preston, my brother." Stibbs made a very low bow. "We can trust you, I believe, Stibbs." Stibbs contented himself with a ruminative jerk of his head. "You know, Stibbs, that his life, and all our lives, depend upon great secrecy. He will wear a lay dress, and will go by the name of Ambrose Perkins, a gentleman of Essex, lately returned from foreign parts." "Yes, your honour," said Stibbs, getting it by heart"Mr. Ambrose Perkins." "We cannot conceal from any in the house," said Mr. Preston, "who he really is. And there is no use in attempting to do so. So get them together, and let them know; and tell them what I have told you-Mr. Ambrose Perkins." "Mr. Ambrose Perkins," repeated Stibbs, with emphasis. "The farm-people need not know." "O dear, no, your honour," said Stibbs; "not they. Besides, your honour, one of them is a heretic-Oreb Wyggins." "Ah, true," said Mr. Preston; "I wish we were rid of the fellow." "So do I, your honour, if I may take leave to say so." "Well," said Mr. Preston, "now, up-stairs. Take Father Alfred's box and beard. O, I see, you've got that, Alfred, yourself. Very well-box and beard up-stairs.' Stibbs came up to where Father Alfred stood to get the box, and passing him, knelt to ask for his blessing. |