n many cases graved upon the border of the metal; but often,
instead of the old 'funera plango, fulgura frango,' &c., or the
dedication to Virgin or saint, the churchwarden who ordered the bell
would order also an inscription, composed by himself, commemorative of
his work and office. The doggerel was sometimes absurd enough:--

Samuel Knight made this ring
In Binstead Steeple for to ding;

or,

Thomas Eyer and John Winslade did contrive
To cast from four bells this peal of five;

or,

At proper times my voice I'll raise,
And sound to my subscribers' praise.[959]

And when the new bell was placed in the steeple, instead of the priestly
unctions and quaint ceremonies of a past age, there was too often a
heathenish scene of drunkenness and revelry. A common custom, alluded to
by White of Selborne, was to fix it bottom upwards, and fill it with
strong liquor. At Checkendon, in Oxfordshire, this was attended with
fatal results. There is a tradition that one of the ringers helped
himself so freely from the extemporised ale cask that he died on the
spot, and was buried underneath the tower. Bells were still sometimes
rung to dissipate thunderstorms, and perhaps to drive away contagion,
under the notion that their vibrations purified the air. They were often
rung on other occasions when they would have been much better silent.
At Bath no stranger of the smallest pretension to fashion could arrive
without being welcomed by a peal of the Abbey bells.[960]

The curfew has not even yet fallen entirely into disuse. In the last
century it was oftener heard to 'toll the knell of parting day.' At
Ripon its place was supplied by a horn sounded every evening at
nine.[961]

'If,' said Robert Nelson, 'his senses hold out so long, he can hear even
his passing bell without disturbance.' Towards the beginning of the
century, this old custom seems to have been tolerably general. Its
original object had been to invite prayers in behalf of a departing
soul, and to summon the priest, if he had had no other admonition, to
his last duty of extreme unction. It was retained by the sixty-seventh
canon as a solemn reminder of mortality. But towards the end of the
century it was fast becoming obsolete. Pennant, writing in 1796, says
that though the practice was still punctually kept up in some places, it
had fallen into general desuetude in the towns.[962]

Churches neglected and in disrepair were not likely to be su