passage running in the direction of the ruinous
hall of Kirby, a mile and a half distant. In a like manner a
passage extended from the great hall of Warleigh, an Elizabethan
house near Plymouth, to an outlet in a cliff some sixty yards
away, at whose base the tidal river flows.

Speke Hall, Lancashire (perhaps the finest specimen extant of
the wood-and-plaster style of architecture nicknamed "Magpie "),
formerly possessed a long underground communication extending
from the house to the shore of the river Mersey; a member of
the Norreys family concealed a priest named Richard Brittain
here in the year 1586, who, by this means, effected his escape
by boat.

The famous secret passage of Nottingham Castle, by which the
young King Edward III. and his loyal associates gained access
to the fortress and captured the murderous regent and usurper
Mortimer, Earl of March, is known to this day as "Mortimer's
Hole." It runs up through the perpendicular rock upon which the
castle stands, on the south-east side from a place called Brewhouse
yard, and has an exit in what was originally the courtyard of the
building. The Earl was seized in the midst of his adherents and
retainers on the night of October 19th, 1330, and after a skirmish,
notwithstanding the prayers and entreaties of his paramour Queen
Isabella, he was bound and carried away through the passage in
the rock, and shortly afterwards met his well-deserved death on
the gallows at Smithfield.

But what ancient castle, monastery, or hall has not its traditional
subterranean passage? Certainly the majority are mythical; still,
there are some well authenticated. Burnham Abbey, Buckinghamshire,
for example, or Tenterden Hall, Hendon, had passages which have
been traced for over fifty yards; and one at Vale Royal,
Nottinghamshire, has been explored for nearly a mile. In the
older portions in both of the great wards of Windsor Castle arched
passages thread their way below the basement, through the chalk,
and penetrate to some depth below the site of the castle ditch
at the base of the walls.[1] In the neighbourhood of Ripon
subterranean passages have been found from time to time--tunnels
of finely moulded masonry supposed to have been connected at
one time with Fountains Abbey.

[Footnote 1: See Marquis of Lorne's (Duke of Argyll) _Governor's
Guide to Windsor_.]

A passage running from Arundel Castle in the direction of Amberley
has also been traced for some considerable dis