Andrews William
Old Church Lore
The Passing Bell
The passing bell, or soul bell, rang whilst persons were passing from this life to that beyond, and it was rung that all who heard it might address prayers to heaven and the saints for the soul then being separated from the mortal body. One of the earliest accounts of the use of bells in England is connected with this bell. Bede, in speaking of the death of the Abbess of St. Hilda, says that a sister in a distant monastery thought that she heard in her sleep the well-known sound of the passing bell. She no sooner heard it than she called all the sisters from their rest into the church, where they prayed and sang a requiem. To show how persistently the custom was maintained, we may quote from the “Advertisements for due Order,” passed in the seventh year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth: “Item, that when anye Christian body is in passing, that the bell be tolled, and that the curate be speciallie called for to comforte the sicke person; and, after the time of his passinge, to ringe no more, but one shorte peale, and one before the buriall, and another shorte peale after the buriall.” In ancient days, the bell rang at the hour of passing, whether it happened to be night or day. In the churchwardens’ accounts for the parish of Wolchurch, 1526, appears the following regulation:
Shakespeare’s universal observation led him to make use of the melancholy meaning of the death bell. He says, in the second part of King Henry IV.:
“And his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell
Remembered knolling a departing friend.”
The passing bell has a place in the story of the death, in the Tower of London, of Lady Catherine Grey, sister to the unfortunate Lady Jane. The constable of the Tower, Sir Owen Hopton, seeing that the end was approaching, said to Mr. Bokeham: “Were it not best to send to the church, that the bell may be rung?” and Lady Catherine herself, hearing the remark, said to him: “Good Sir Owen, be it so,” and died almost at once, closing her eyes with her own hands. This was in 1567.
The tolling of the passing bell, as such, continued until the time of Charles II., and it was one of the subjects of inquiry in all articles of visitation.
The form of inquiry in the Archdeaconry of Yorke by the churchwardens and swornemen, in 163-, was: “Whether doth your clark or sexton, when any one is passing out of this life, neglect to toll a bell, having notice thereof, or, the party being dead, doth he suffer any more ringing than one short peale, and before his burial one, and after the same another?” Inquiry was also to be made: “Whether, at the death of any, there be any superstitious ringing?” There is a widespread saying:
“When the bell begins to toll,
Lord have mercy on the soul.”
Gascoigne, in his “Workes,” 1587, mentions the passing bell in the prefatory lines to a sonnet, he says:
“Alas, loe now I heare the passing bell,
Which care appoynteth carefully to knowle,
And in my brest I feele my heart now swell
To breake the stringes which joynd it to my soule.”
Another instance of the poetic use is to be found in the Rape of Lucrece, by Heywood (1630), where Valerius exclaims: “Nay, if he be dying, as I could wish he were, I’le ring out his funerall peale, and this it is:
Come list and harke, the bell doth towle,
For some but now departing soule.
And was not that some ominous fowle,
The batt, the night-crow, or skreech-owle,
To these I heare the wild woolfe howle,
In this black night that seems to skowle.
All these my black booke shall in-rowle;
For hark, still, still, the bell doth towle
For some but now departing sowle.”
Just a little earlier, Copley, in his “Wits, Fits, and Fancies” (1614), bears evidence to the ringing of the bell while persons were yet alive. A gentleman who lay upon a severe sick bed, heard a passing bell ring out, and thereupon asked his physician: “Tell me, maister Doctor, is yonder musicke for my dancing?” Continuing the subject, he gives an anecdote concerning “The ringing out at the burial.” It is as follows: A rich miser and a beggar were buried in the same churchyard at the same time, “and the belles rung out amaine” for the rich man. The son of the former, fearing the tolling might be thought to be for the beggar instead of his father, hired a trumpeter to stand “all the ringing-while” in the belfry and proclaim between every peal, “Sirres, this next peale is not for R., but for Maister N.,” his father. In the superstitions which gathered round the bells of Christianity, the passing bell was considered to ward off the influence of evil spirits from the departing soul. Grose says: “The passing bell was anciently rung for two purposes: one to bespeak the prayers of all good Christians for a soul just departing; the other to drive away the evil spirits who stood at the bed’s foot and about the house, ready to seize their prey, or at least to molest and terrify the soul in its passage; but, by the ringing of the bell (for Durandus informs us evil spirits are much afraid of bells), they were kept aloof; and the soul, like a hunted hare, gained the start, or had what is by sportsmen called law. Hence, perhaps, exclusive of the additional labour, was occasioned the high price demanded for tolling the greatest bell of the church, for, that being louder, the evil spirits must go farther off to be clear of its sound, by which the poor soul got so much more the start of them; besides, being heard farther off, it would likewise procure the dying man a greater number of prayers.” This dislike of spirits to bells is mentioned in the “Golden Legend,” by Wynkyn de Worde.
Douce takes the driving away of the spirits to be the main object in ringing the passing bell, and draws attention to the woodcuts in the Horæ, which contain the “Service of Dead,” where several devils are represented as waiting in the chamber of the dying man, while the priest is administering extreme unction. Of course, the interpretation that the spirits are waiting to take possession of the soul so soon as disembodied is not necessarily the intentional meaning. Douce concludes his remarks by an observation which has escaped the notice of most of those who have dealt with the subject. He says: “It is to be hoped that this ridiculous custom will never be revived, which has been most probably the cause of sending many a good soul to the other world before its time; nor can the practice of tolling bells for the dead be defended upon any principle of common sense, prayers for the dead being contrary to the articles of our religion.” When the English first began to see the apparent inconsistency of the practice of tolling with their declared religion, the subject gave rise to much controversy. The custom had many apologists. Bishop Hall says: “We call them soul bells, for that they signify the departure of the soul, not for that they help the passage of the soul.” Wheatly says: “Our Church, in imitation of the saints in former ages, calls on the minister and others who are at hand to assist their brother in his last extremity.” Dr. Zouch (1796) says: “The soul bell was tolled before the departure of a person out of life, as a signal for good men to offer up their prayers for the dying. Hence the abuse commenced of praying for the dead.” He cites Douce’s versified letter to Sir Henry Wotton:
“And thicken on you now, as prayers ascend
To heaven on troops at a good man’s passing bell.”
Fuller, long before this, in 1647, expresses some little indignation at hearing a bell toll after the person had died, as he was thereby cheated into prayer. He observes: “What is this but giving a false alarm to men’s devotions, to make them ready to arm with their prayers for the assistance of such who have already fought the good fight.” Dekker, in an evident reference to the passing bell, calls it “the great capon-bell.”
From the number of strokes being formerly regulated according to circumstances, the hearers might determine the sex and social condition of the dying or dead person. Thus the bell was tolled twice for a woman and thrice for a man. If for a clergyman, as many times as he had orders, and, at the conclusion, a peal on all the bells to distinguish the quality of the person for whom the people are to put up their prayers. In the North of England, are yet rung nine knells for a man, six for a woman, and three for a child.
Concerning Coffins
The use of the coffin may be traced back to a remote period. The remains of Joseph were conveyed in a coffin from Egypt to Canaan. The Christians adopted their use from the heathen.
Coffins have been made of various kinds of material. Cedar was used for the Athenian heroes on account of its aromatic and incorruptible qualities. It is said that Alexander was buried in one made of gold. Marble and stone were largely used by the Romans, but many lead coffins have been found in the Roman cemeteries at Colchester, York, London, and other places. Coffins of baked clay and cists formed of tiles have been found at York and at Adlborough. Glass coffins have been used in England. Wooden coffins are, in this country, of great antiquity. It is recorded that King Arthur was buried, in 542, in the entire trunk of a tree, hollowed. Some of the earlier coffins made of wood are extremely rude in shape. Abbot Warin, of St. Alban’s, 1183-95, gave directions for the monks to be buried in stone coffins. They had previously been buried without coffins, under the green turf. According to an ancient legend, St. Cuthbert’s remains sailed down the Tweed in a stone coffin.
Generally speaking, the modes of burying the dead in the Middle Ages were without coffins. The corpses were usually enveloped in linen, but members of religious houses were usually buried in the habit of their order.
Coffins, in their universal use in this country, comparatively speaking, belong to modern times. Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, writing in 1742, says that sixty years before that period it was a common custom to bury the dead without coffins. People of rank, however, were usually buried in coffins, unless they left directions to the contrary.
Sir Walter Scott has made us familiar with the fact that it was customary for to deposit their dead in a vault at Roslin Chapel, attired in the armour they had used in life.
“The lordly line of high Saint Clair”
In Ireland, there was a curious custom of burying the dead without coffins. “Until about the year 1818,” says a correspondent of Notes and Queries, Second Series, vol. i., p. 455, “certain families, named Tracey, Doyle, and Daly, of the townland of Craan, near Enniscorthy, in the barony of Scarawalsh, in the county of Wexford, were in the habit of burying their dead uncoffined, in the graveyard attached to the Augustinian Abbey of Saint John. The bodies were brought to the place of sepulture in open coffins, with their faces uncovered. The graves were made six or more feet deep, and lined with bright green turf from the banks of the river Slaney. In these green chambers, were strewn moss, dry grass, and flowers, and a pillow of the same supported the head of the corpse when it was laid in its last earthly bed.”
In a “Table of Dutyes” of Shoreditch Church, 1664, are references to the amounts to be paid if coffins are not used at funerals. It is stated, “for a burial in ye new churchyard, without a coffin, eight pence; for a burial in ye olde churchyard, without a coffin, seaven pence; and for the grave-making and attendance of ye Vicar and Clarke on ye enterment of a corps uncoffined, the churchwardens to pay the ordinary duteys, and no more, of this table.”
The poor were usually buried in parish coffins, or rather taken from their humble homes to the grave in a coffin, and at the grave removed from it and merely interred in their shrouds. At Easingwold Church, in East Yorkshire, an interesting example of the parish coffin is still preserved. It is strongly and roughly made of oak. We give an illustration of this old-time relic from a carefully-made drawing by Mr. J. H. Doe. In Smith’s “Old Yorkshire,” vol. v., pp. 106-110, will be found an informing article on the Easingwold and other parish coffins, by the late Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A., who collected much out-of-the-way information on this subject. From the Rev. Canon Hayman, he received the following important communication: “The old historical town of Youghal, in the county of Cork,” wrote Canon Hayman, “has many features of interest for the antiquary, chiefest among which is the venerable Collegiate Church of St. Mary. The cemetery attached to this noble edifice is the Pere la Chase of Ireland. The ground naturally forms a succession of terraces, here swelling into little knolls, there sinking into gentle declivities. A poet said of the Protestant burial ground of Rome: ‘It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place,’ and the saying may be repeated of the Youghal churchyard. Death is here divested of its horror, and wears the softened aspect of stillness and unbroken repose. On its northern and western sides, the cemetery is overhung by the old walls of the town, which are yet in good preservation. In a portion of those defences, nearly opposite to the western gable of the church, is a recessed [coffin-shaped] aperture, of which the accompanying is an engraving. Here, as the old folk tell us, was kept the public coffin for the poor of Youghal. Whenever needed, it was sent to the house of the dead; and, so soon as it had discharged its office, it was replaced here. The walls, as may be perceived, are of three thicknesses. The newest piece, in front, is of hammered, well-squared masonry. More ancient is the furthest drawn, where the materials are less in size, and are less carefully finished; but, lying between these twain, is a fragment of a very old wall, built of exceeding small stones, and evidently preserved from demolition because of its characteristic feature – the Parish Coffin Recess.” It will be observed, from the illustration we give, that the recess was coffin-shaped, so that when the parish coffin was not in use it might be placed upright in the place specially prepared for it.
Respecting the parish coffin of Stockton-on-Tees, there is a note in the history of the town, by the Rev. John Brewer, and published in 1796. It is stated: “Soon after the Rev. Geo. Walker, vicar [1715], came to reside at Stockton-on-Tees, he was called upon to inter a poor person. When they came to the grave, the attendants were preparing to take the body out of the shell or coffin which contained it. He enquired what they were doing, and was informed that the same coffin was used for the funerals of the poor, and that this was intended to serve again. He insisted on its being put into the ground with the body; and, from this time, took care to prevent a repetition of such an act of indecency.”
During the visit of the members of the Yorkshire Architectural Society to Howden, on August 25th, 1885, an old oak parish coffin was inspected by them. It was much dilapidated, but on it could be traced the date, 1664.
We have found in old churchwardens’ accounts several entries relating to parish or church coffins. In the Vestry Book of St. Oswald, Durham, are the following items:
The same parish records for 1666-7 contain an entry as follows:
Parish coffins must have been very distasteful to the poor, for the humbler classes of England dearly love a display at a funeral. An epitaph in St. Michael’s churchyard, Macclesfield, illustrates the weakness in this direction in our character. It reads as follows:
“Mary Broomfield, dyd 19 Novr., 1755, aged 80
The chief concern of her life for the last 20 years was to order and provide for her funeral. Her greatest pleasure was to think and talk about it. She lived many years on a pension of 9d. a week, and yet saved £5, which, at her own request, was laid out on her funeral.”
In the reign of George III., wars prevailed to an alarming extent, and extraordinary taxes were levied to obtain money to maintain the army and navy. Among the proposals made to raise further revenue was a tax on coffins, which gave rise to some keen epigrams. Here are a couple of examples. The first is by Mr. Evans, M.P., and dated Derby, July 6, 1791:
“Taxed when we’re born and when we die,
Must coffins now a tax supply?
In vain on earth we respite crave,
Or seek a shelter in the grave!”
Mr. Evans adverts to the old tax by which persons, not being in the receipt of alms, had to pay two shillings on the birth of a child. The nobility and gentry were taxed at a much higher rate, for example, a duke, for his eldest son, had to pay £30. Another epigrammatist addressed the king as follows:
“Taxed to the bone, thy loving subjects see!
But still supposed, when dead from taxes free;
Now to complete, Great George, thy glorious reign,
Excis’d to death, we’re then excis’d again.”
The Curfew Bell
Few points of national history have given rise to so much discussion as the facts and inferences connected with what is known as the curfew law. The testimony of the various writers on ancient jurisprudence differs widely as to the period at which the law originated, and yet more widely as to the object and intention of those who imposed it upon the people of England. We will first briefly outline the regulation or custom as we find it under the Normans. At eight in the evening, a bell was rung, the sound of which was the signal for everyone to put out, or rather cover, their fires, extinguish all lights, and go to bed. This was the curfew law, which it has been the custom to regard as a repressive measure adopted by the tyrant Conqueror to prevent seditious meetings of the turbulent Saxons. We “find the name of curfew law employed as a bye-word denoting the most odious tyranny, and historians, poets, and lawyers, speaking of it as the acme of despotism, levelled alone at the vanquished English.” We will endeavour to show that, on the contrary, the law was in existence and force before the Normans trod the conquered fields of Angle-land, and that its intention was to cherish the good of the country by preventing the rise of conflagrations.
Throughout the north of Europe, in monasteries and towns, a bell for covering of fires was in common use; a regulation which reason cannot but approve, for most dwellings, even those of the higher classes, were built, for the greater part, of timber, the Saxon term for building being an expression meaning to “make of wood.” We read that London and other towns were frequently subject to fires. In England, the curfew law is said to have been made an established institution by King Alfred. When that monarch restored the University which had been founded at Oxford by St. Frideswide, he ordained, among other thoughtful regulations, that a bell should be rung every night at eight, when all the inhabitants of Oxford should cover up their fires and go to bed. The intention was not that the fires should be put out, but merely deadened. As Mr. Lomax observes, “The old fires were made in the centre of a large hearth, and the accumulated ashes were swept to the back and sides. At the curfew, the large logs were removed, and the cold ashes raked over the fire so as to cover it. A fire so covered will often keep smouldering for days, and can be re-lighted by adding fuel and admitting air, a most important consideration in the days of tinder-boxes. The same custom is still pursued in the backwoods of America, in the Australian bush, and in our own ‘black country,’ where the great coal fires are ‘raked’ in the old fashion nightly.”
The word curfew is derived from the old French carre-feu or cerre-feu, which afterwards became couvre-feu, and lastly curfew. Each of these terms, meaning to cover fire, indicates the intention; and there was a utensil known as the couvre-feu, a kind of metal cover, somewhat resembling a shield in form, the use of which was to be thrust over the fire when the bell rang. This probably would only be found in the houses of the wealthy.
King Alfred the Great passed away, and all the line of Saxon and Danish monarchs after him; yet probably the curfew, under one or another of its ancient names, was kept up as a national observance in each of their reigns, with more or less laxity. At last the Conqueror came, and after that sanguinary struggle, which had to roughly pave the way for England’s advancement, he set himself the task of governing the people he had overcome. Whether he found the law of the curfew still feebly kept up, or whether it had died out we cannot tell, but we know that two years after the battle of Hastings – in 1068 – he ordered fires to be covered at the ringing of an eight o’clock bell, and the people to retire to rest. He had probably been accustomed to a similar regulation in Normandy; and it is evident the enactment, however more severely enforced than the Saxons had previously experienced, could not have been purposed as a suspicious and contemptuous safeguard against them, for the haughty robbers called nobles were as subject to the curfew as the meanest swineherds they owned. There seems to have been, from an indefinitely early period, a religious service at eight in the evening. When William, after the injuries received by the plunging of his horse as it trod upon hot ashes, lay dying, the vesper bell of a neighbouring church aroused him from the stupor which had gathered round his sinking mind. He asked if he were in England, and if that were the curfew ringing, and on being told he was in “his own Normandy,” and the bell was for evening prayer, he “charged them bid the monks pray for his soul, and remained awhile dull and heavy.” Polydore-Vergil tells us that William, to convert the native ferocity of the people to indolence, ordained that the head of each family should retire to rest at eight in the evening, “having raked the ashes over the fire; and for this purpose a sign should be made through every village, which is even now preserved, and called in the Norman, cover-feu.” Mr. Hutchinson, in his “History of Durham,” speaks of the curfew with great bitterness: he says that William “under severe penalties, prohibited the use of fire or candles when the curfew bell should ring, to prevent associations and conspiracies. This bell was heard by the English as the knell of their departed liberty, and a repeated testimony of slavery.”
We learn from Du Cange, that the ringing of the couvre-feu, ignitegium, or peritegium bell, as it was called in mediæval low Latin, prevailed generally in Europe during the Middle Ages as a precaution against fire; and this fact is alone sufficient to justify William in reviving and extending the law in this country.
Voltaire, in his “Universal History,” ridicules the notion of the curfew being a badge of degradation; he observes that “The law, far from being tyrannical, was only an ancient police, established in almost all the towns of the north, and which had been long preserved in the convents.” And he adds this reason for it: “That the houses were all built of wood, and the fear of fire was one of the most important objects of general police.” Throughout the reigns of William I., and his son, William II., the curfew law was rigidly enforced, and, however good its intentions were, the rigour of its administration rendered it increasingly obnoxious. The politic Henry I., in 1103, wisely repealed the enactment, modifying the law, which, however, though not compulsory, “settled into a cherished custom.” Though perhaps no longer as Thomson describes:
“The shiv’ring wretches at the curfew sound
Dejected sunk into their sordid beds,
And, through the mournful gloom of ancient times
Mus’d sad, or dreamt of better.”
Yet the weary yeomen would doubtless for a long time welcome the hour that heralded rest. Certainly the name lingered as a dividing period of the day.
Blackstone says (vol. iv., p. 420) that Henry “abolished the curfew, for though it is mentioned in our laws a full century afterwards, yet it is rather spoken of as a known time of night (so denominated from that abrogated usage) than as a still subsisting custom.”
Chaucer speaks of it as a time of day:
“The dede sleep, for every besinesse,
Fell on this carpenter, right as I gesse,
About curfew time, or litel more.”
In the Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i., p. 4, it is stated upon the authority of Monsieur Pasquier, that the ringing of the curfew bell was a custom long established in particular towns in France, and originated, as he supposes, in times of tumult and sedition. But the earliest instance he gives is no farther back than the year 1331, when the city of Laon, which had forfeited its privileges, was reinstated therein by Philip de Valois, who directed that for the future a curfew bell should be rung in a certain tower in that city, at the close of the day. Pasquier adds, that under the reigns of Charles VI. and VII., it came much into use.
We will now glance over the records of the curfew, as found in deeds, enactments, poetry, and tradition, preserving, as nearly as convenient, a sequence of date.
In the second mayoralty of Sir Henry Colet, knight (father of Dean Colet), A.D. 1495, and under his direction, this solemn charge was given to the quest of wardmote in every ward, as it stands printed in the Custumary of London: “Also yf there be anye paryshe clerke that ryngeth curfewe after the curfewe be ronge at Bowe Chyrche, or Saint Brydes Chyrche, or Saint Gyles without Cripelgat, all suche to be presented.” Stow may be regarded as corroborating the statement of curfew usage at the two latter churches.
In Stripe’s edition of Stow, 1721 (vol. i., b. 3, p. 542), speaking of St. Mary-le-Bow, it is stated that “The parish clerk’s office, belonging to this church, was to ring the curfew bell; as it was to be rung at three other churches in London, at a pretty distance from each other. That, so this notice, all the curfew bells in other parishes might be rung in due season, viz., Barking Church, S. Bride’s, and S. Giles’s without Cripplegate.”
In the articles agreed upon and settled in 22 Henry VIII. (1531), for the guidance of the sexton of Faversham, we read: “Imprimis, the sexton, or his sufficient deputy, shall lye in the church steeple; and, at eight o’clock every night, shall ring the curfewe by the space of a quarter of an hour, with such bell as of old time hath been accustomed.”
In the Middle Ages, so much regard was paid to ringing the couvre-feu, that land was occasionally left to pay for it. This feeling appears to have been not altogether extinct, even so late as the close of the sixteenth century, for in Bishop Hall’s “Fourth Satire” occurs the following:
“Who ever gives a paire of velvet shooes
To th’ Holy Rood, or liberally allowes
But a new rope to ring the couvre-feu bell,
But he desires that his great deed may dwell,
Or graven in the chancel-window glasse,
Or in his lasting tombe of plated brasse.”
In the churchwardens’ and chamberlains’ accounts of Kingston-on-Thames, occurs the following item:
According to the Hon. Daines Barrington, curfew is written curphour “in an old Scottish poem, published in 1770, with many others, from the MSS. of George Bannatyne, who collected them in the year 1568.” It is observed in the notes which accompany these poems, that, by “Act 144, Parliament 13, James I., this bell was to be rung in boroughs at nine in the evening, and that the hour was afterwards changed to ten, at the solicitation of the wife of James VI.’s favourite, James Stewart.” This lends some countenance to what might otherwise seem erroneous in the works of the poets and dramatists. Thus, in the old play of the Merry Devil of Edmonton (1631), the sexton exclaims:
“Well, ’tis nine a clocke, ’tis time to ring curfew.”
We fear, however, that Shakespeare cannot be held free from mistake and uncertainty in his fixing of the curfew hour. Thus, in Measure for Measure, the Duke says:
“The best and wholesom’st spirits of the night
Invellop you, good Provost! Who call’d here o’ late?
Provost: None since the curfew rang.”
In The Tempest, Prospero says:
“You whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew.”
Again, in Romeo and Juliet, he seems to advance the time still further. Lord Capulet is made to say:
“Come stir, stir, stir, the second cock hath crowed,
The curphew bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock.”
In King Lear, we also find the curfew considered a midnight bell: “This is the foul fiend, Flibbertigibbett: he begins at curfew, and walks to the first cock.”
Instances of land being given for the ringing of the bell are at Mapouder, Dorset, where land was given “to find a man to ring the morning and curfew bell throughout the year,” and at Ibberton, in the same county, one acre of land was given for the ringing of the eight o’clock bell, and £4. for ringing the morning bell.
Macaulay, in 1791, says: “The custom of ringing curfew, which is still kept up at Claybrook, has probably obtained without intermission since the days of the Norman conqueror.” In winter, and in flat and dangerous localities, the ringing of the bell in the evening has often been the means of safely guiding and sometimes saving the lives of travellers; and there are instances on record of persons so saved leaving a sum of money for ringing this bell. Such is the story told of a bride who, from an English village, stole out to hide, like another Ginevra, from her friends on the wedding day. The place was near a wide moor, and the girl hid awhile among the furze. When she sought to return, to laugh merrily at the anxious groom and guests, she, alas! took a wrong path, and presently found herself lost on the waste. The shades of night and the shrouding snow fell fast, and the bride had well nigh given herself up to despair, when, hark! the curfew bell! Yes, it is the well-known curfew bell solemnly, and O, how sweetly, pealing from the grey old tower, that overshadowed her home. After being guided to that home by the blessed sound, she presented a chime of bells to the church, and, upon her death, years after, it was found she had bequeathed money to keep up the ringing of the curfew bell for ever.
