If Nonconformists would adore the Almighty as their consciences dictated, they had to do so in concealment, and to adopt ingenious devices to avoid notice, or to elude pursuit. In the old Tudor Mansion, at Compton Winyates, Warwickshire, there is a chapel in the roof with secret passages contrived for the safety of Popish recusants; and in Oxburgh Hall, in Norfolk, there is a recess within a small closet, with a trap-door concealed in the pavement. These contrivances were imitated by Protestant Nonconformists in the days of Charles II. An instance of this kind, not long since, could be shown among the ruins of the Priory of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, consisting of subterranean ways and doors in the crypt. The Baptists of Bristol hung up a curtain, and placed their minister behind it, so that a spy coming in could not see the speaker. When a suspicious person made his appearance it was customary for the congregation to begin singing, and for the preacher to pause. At Andover, it is said, that the Dissenters met for prayer in a dark room, until a ray of morning light, struggling down the chimney, announced the hour to depart.[437] [Sidenote: 1663.] In the village of Eversden, in the County of Cambridge, stands an old Manor house, moated round and approached by an ancient bridge. It is reported that a vehicle might be often seen crossing that bridge after dark, in the time of persecution, on its way to Cambridge, to bring back Francis Holcroft, to preach at midnight in the wood, which skirted the back of the edifice. There was once a Gospel Beech in the Wolds of Gloucestershire, a Gospel Oak near Kentish Town, and an Oak of Reformation in Kett the Tanner's Camp, near the City of Norwich, and to these may be added the Oak at Eversden,--remaining within the memory of the present generation, called the Pulpit Tree--a sort of Christian Dodona, from which the minister just named announced the Word of Life. In the woods near Hitchin, tradition reports, that John Bunyan used, after nightfall, to gather together great numbers of the neighbouring peasantry; and at Duckinfield, in Cheshire, people can still point out the place where the "proscribed ministers were met by their faithful adherents, when the pious service of prayer, praise, and exhortation had no other walls to surround it but the oaken thicket, and no other roof for its protection but the canopy of Heaven."[438] [Sidenote: EJECTED MINISTERS.] A few of the ejected ministers lived in comfortable circumstances. Inheriting a fortune, or acquiring property during their connection with the Establishment, they were provided against pecuniary inconvenience after the Restoration.