also was a small private staircase
in the wall, possibly the "back stairs" mentioned in Sir Ralph's
letters.[1]

[Footnote 1: See _Memoirs of the Verney Family._]

[Illustration: SHIPTON COURT, OXFORDSHIRE]

[Illustration: BROUGHTON CASTLE, OXFORDSHIRE]

Before the breaking out of the Civil War, Hampden, Pym, Lord
Brooke, and other of the Parliamentary leaders, held secret meetings
at Broughton Castle, oxon, the seat of Lord Saye and Sele, to
organise a resistance to the arbitrary measures of the king. In
this beautiful old fortified and moated mansion the secret stairs
may yet be seen that led up to the little isolated chamber, with
massive casemated walls for the exclusion of sound. Anthony Wood,
alluding to the secret councils, says: "Several years before the
Civil War began, Lord Saye, being looked upon as the godfather
of that party, had meetings of them in his house at Broughton,
where was a room and passage thereunto which his servants were
prohibited to come near."[1] There is also a hiding-hole behind
a window shutter in the wall of a corridor, with an air-hole
ingeniously devised in the masonry.

[Footnote 1: _Memorials of Hampden._]

The old dower-house of Fawsley, not many miles to the north-east
of Broughton, in the adjoining county of Northamptonshire, had
a secret room over the hall, where a private press was kept for
the purpose of printing political tracts at this time, when the
country was working up into a state of turmoil.

When the regicides were being hunted out in the early part of
Charles II.'s reign, Judge Mayne[1] secreted himself at his house,
Dinton Hall, Bucks, but eventually gave himself up. The hiding-hole
at Dinton was beneath the staircase, and accessible by removing
three of the steps. A narrow passage which led from it to a space
behind the beams of the roof had its sides or walls thickly lined
with cloth, so as to muffle all sound.

[Footnote 1: There is a tradition that it was a servant of Mayne
who acted as Charles I.'s executioner.]

Bradshawe Hall, in north-west Derbyshire (once the seat of the
family of that name of which the notorious President was a member),
has or had a concealed chamber high up in the wall of a room on
the ground floor which was capable of holding three persons.
Of course tradition says the "wicked judge was hidden here."

[Illustration: ENTRANCE GATE, BRADSHAWE HALL, DERBYSHIRE]

The regicides Colonels Whalley and Goffe had many narrow escapes