An ample supper and a good store of wine (which, by the way, had been carefully drugged) was sent up to the unwelcome visitors, and in due course the drink effected its purpose, and its victims dropped off one by one until the whole party lay like logs upon the floor.
Mrs. Arthur Jones then crept in, having even to step over the bodies of the inanimate Roundheads, released her husband, and, a fresh horse being in readiness, by the time the effects of the wine had worn off, the Royalist captain was far beyond their reach. The secret room is situated in the front of the building, and has now been converted into a very cosy little dressing-room, preserving its panelled wainscoting, and but little altered, with the exception of the entry to it, which is now by an ordinary door.
The shelves open.
The above tradition has been provided by Miss Whitmore Jones, the present representative of the family.
Abbots Salford, another fine old mansion, has its chapel and resident priest for the services still held there.
In a dark passage up in the garrets is the priest's hole, as ingeniously concealed and intact as it was three centuries ago. By removing a wooden peg from a particular shelf in the most innocent-looking of cupboards, the whole back of it, oak shelves and all, swings backwards into a large and dismal recess four feet in depth. This ingenious swing door may be fastened on the inside by a stout wooden bolt provided for that purpose.
SECRET CHAMBER UNDER A ROOM IN MOSELEY HALL—ALSO USED BY CHARLES II.
When the Civil War was raging, many a defeated Royalist owed his preservation to the priests' holes and secret chambers of the old Catholic houses all over the country. Did not King Charles II. himself owe his life to the artful hiding-places of Boscobel, Moseley, Trent, and Heale?