But that's exactly what happened.
Well. Okay, not really. There was no police force, but certainly officers of the king (or perhaps the Tudor Queen) in this case. And no, not baptist ministers of course. But it may as well have been! They weren't looking for the ends of snapped nylon guitar strings, rainbow straps, half-drunk cups of dishwater tea, or sock-clad sandal wearers. They were looking for catholic priests, who, at the time, were so illegal that they had to be hunted down and rounded up.
And in grand houses, like Oxburgh Hall, where I was today, you had a nifty mechanism for hiding your local priest should the mafia pop round. Pop open the trap door and squeeze him into the priest hole. In you go, Father.
"Do you reckon they got down here with all their robes on?" I asked Anita and John as I slid through the hole in the floor. I imagined the mitre and garment slipping over the cool stones, the priest athletically collecting up his skirts and then lighting a candle while the wooden door creaked shut above him. Then the footsteps.
Oxburgh Hall has been the home of the Bedingfields since the Fifteenth Century - a magnificent moated pile in the flat green fields of Norfolk. It's an unusual combination of grand and cosy - two things that I don't think should be exclusive of each other, but often are in these places. I rather think that might be because to some degree or other, the Bedingfields still live there (presumably still writing cheesy pop records as if it were 2003).
I sat on a narrow wooden bench. There were cubby holes for bottles, plates of cheese, a cold ham and a statue of the Virgin Mary, though all empty today of course. She'd long gone. But a priest could have been quite comfortable down there while soldiers rattled around for rosary beads above. Although very dangerous, I did wonder whether it made being a priest a whole lot more exciting - a persecuted minority, underground, practising a secret faith that was treason to the law of the land and its greatest ruler. And all that was only four hundred years ago - relatively recent, given where we are now!
I wonder. Would I hide a baptist minister in the airing cupboard if the intolerance police popped round for a visit? 'Singing,' you say, officer? Kum-by-ya? No, I don't think so. Could it be the wind?
Or more daringly still, would I be the minister himself? Not necessarily baptist but maybe, say, a hip charismatic with a funky old beard, skinny jeans and pair of Converse? Or perhaps just that bold old integrity and radical kindness that set early Christians and ministers apart. If it were illegal to be such a minister, or a priest, would there be enough reason, enough about my life to say I definitely should be down that priest hole with Father Trendy?
The guide told us that Oxburgh Hall had been searched twice, according to records in London, but no evidence of priestly ministry was ever found.
As I hauled myself up and out through the stone floor, I wondered just what exactly might be visible in my own house.
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