It’s hard to imagine a time when to have a faith other than the one endorsed by the monarch, meant that you’d have to pay a huge fine and more concerning, watch your back.
This tiny space, a ladder to a 6 foot square squeezed beside a chimney, nestled in a 500 year old Manor House. Here’s a clue which tells us that sometimes when the world you know gets paranoid and ugly, this is what you get, a place to hide away.
It’s difficult to remain a Catholic without the help of a priest and even more so in the 16th century when the English monarch is overly concerned that should any of their subjects remain attached to the old faith, they were not then to be totally trusted. This all makes sense to me, when the boss at the top has been replaced with a new one, but you still hanker for the old one. This was only going to tend in tears and as all good stories go you have the good guys and baddies, but with much blurring of lines, it’s hard to see who came out looking good after the carnage.
As for England, history has shown that it got away lightly compared to the religious wars which tore Europe apart, but that doesn’t mean much to those who got roasted for their alternate view of Christianity to the state sponsored brand.
So, if you had the money to pay the fine, and the space to dash away your favourite priest when the authorities arrived, well this is just what a few brave families did for nearly 100 years, as England tried to make sense of the blunderbuss religious reforms.
For most, you just did what you’re told, it was by far much easier to get by this way and besides, the English had always harboured mixed emotions about religion. But for a hardline minority of ancient families which were not going to roll over and walk away from the one true religion of Rome, the scene was set during a showdown between the state and the few.
Spoiler alert: the state one hands down, but a few land-rich families to this day can still trace themselves as having never left the catholic faith.
Speke Hall Estate