The ringing of the bell in bygone times was general as a signal to commence and to close the daily round of labour. In some of the more remote towns and villages of old England the custom lingers at the ingathering of the harvest. At Driffield, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, for example, the harvest bell is still rung at five o’clock in the morning to arouse the labourers from their slumbers, and at seven in the evening the welcome sound of the bell intimates the time for closing work for the day.

References to this subject may sometimes be found in parish accounts and other old church documents. In the parish chest of Barrow-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, is preserved a copy of the “Office and Duty of the Parish Clerk,” bearing date of 1713, stating:—

We learn from an old survey of the parish, still retained amongst the church papers, the reward given to the clerk for ringing the harvest bell. Says the document:—

Barrow-on-Humber became famous for its bells, beer, and singers. An old rhyme states:—

“Barrow for ringing,
And Barrow for singing,
And the Oak for good stout ale.”

The Oak is the sign of the village inn, and a place of more than local reputation for its strong, home-brewed ale.

We have traces of the custom of ringing the harvest bell in various parts of the Midlands. At Moreton and at Walgrave, in Northamptonshire, the harvest bell was rung at four o’clock in the morning. At Spratton, Wellingborough, and other places in the county, the custom is still remembered, but not kept up.

It was customary in many places, when the last load of grain was brought home, to deck it with the boughs of the oak and ash, and a merry peal of the church bells made known the news that the farmer had ended his harvest, the farm labourers riding on the top of the load to sing—

“Harvest home! harvest home!
The boughs they do shake, the bells they do ring,
So merrily we bring the harvest in, harvest in!
So merrily we bring the harvest in.”

In some of the more remote villages of the country, the gleaners’ bell is rung as a signal to commence gleaning. By this means, to use the words of Mr. Thomas North, our leading authority on bell lore, the old and feeble, as well as the young and active, may have a fair start. At Lyddington, Rutland, says Mr. North, the clerk claims a fee of a penny a week from women and big children, as a recompense for his trouble. The parish clerk at West Deeping, Lincolnshire, claimed twopence a head from the gleaners, but as they refused to pay, he declined to ring the bell.

Bearing on this theme may be included particulars of a bell formerly rung at Louth when the harvest on the “Gatherums” was ripe. “A piece of ground so called,” writes Mr. North, “was in former times cultivated for the benefit of the poor. When the ‘pescods’ were ripe, the church bell was rung, which gave warning to the poor that the time had arrived when they might gather them; hence (it is said) gather ’em or gatherum.” From the church accounts is drawn the following:

Similar entries occur in the books of the church.

An inscription on a bell at Coventry, dated 1675, states:—

“I ring at six to let men know
When to and fro’ their work to goe.”

At St. Ives a bell bears a pithy inscription as follows:—

“Arise, and go about your business.”

The bells of Bow are amongst the best known in England, and figure in the legendary lore as well as in the business life of London. Every reader is familiar with the story of Dick Whittington leaving the city in despair, resting on Highgate Hill, and hearing the famous bells, which seemed to say in their merry peals—

“Turn again, Whittington,
Thou worthy citizen,
Lord Mayor of London.”

In 1469, an order was given by the Court of the Common Council for Bow bell to be rung every night at nine o’clock. Nine was the recognised time for tradesmen to close their shops. The clerk, whose duty it was to ring the bell, was irregular in his habits, and the late performance of his duties disappointed the toiling apprentices, who thus addressed him:—

“Clerk of Bow bell,
With thy yellow locks,
For thy late ringing
Thy head shall have knocks.”

The clerk replied:—

“Children of Cheape,
Hold you all still,
For you shall hear Bow Bell
Ring at your will.”

The foregoing rhymes take us back to a period before clocks were in general use in this country. The parentage of the present clock cannot be traced with any degree of certainty. We learn that as early as 996, Gerbert, a distinguished Benedictine monk (subsequently Pope Sylvester II.), constructed for Magdeburg a clock, with a weight as a motive power. Clocks with weights were used in monasteries in Europe in the eleventh century. It is supposed that they had not dials to indicate the time, but at certain intervals struck a bell to make known the time for prayers.From the fact that a clock-keeper was employed at St. Paul’s, London, in 1286, it is presumed that there must have been a clock, but we have not been able to discover any details respecting it. There was a clock at Westminster in 1290, and two years later £30 was paid for a large clock put up at Canterbury Cathedral. Thirty pounds represented a large sum of money in the year 1292. About 1326 an astronomical clock was erected at St. Albans. It was the work of Richard de Wallingford, a blacksmith’s son of the town, who rose to the position of Abbot there. In the earlier half of the fourteenth century are traces of numerous other clocks in England. According to Haydn’s “Dictionary of Dates,” in the year 1530 the first portable clock was made. This statement does not agree with a writer in “Chambers’s EncyclopÆdia” (edition 1890). “The date,” we are told in that work, “when portable clocks were first made, cannot be determined. They are mentioned in the beginning of the fourteenth century. The motive power must have been a mainspring instead of a weight. The Society of Antiquaries of England possess one, with the inscription in Bohemian that it was made at Prague, by Jacob Zech, in 1525. It has a spring for motive power, with fusee, and is one of the oldest portable clocks in a perfect state in England.”

It is asserted that no clock in this country went accurately before the one was erected at Hampton Court, in 1540. Shakespeare, in his Love’s Labour’s Lost, gives us an idea of the unsatisfactory manner clocks kept time in the days of old. He says:—

... “Like a German clock,
Still a-repairing; ever out of frame;
And never going aright.”

Coming down to later times, we may give a few particulars of the difficulty of ascertaining the time in the country in the earlier years of the last century.

Norrisson Scatcherd, the historian of Morley, near Leeds, gives in his history, published in 1830, an amusing sketch of a local worthy named John Jackson, better known as “Old Trash,” poet, schoolmaster, mechanic, stonecutter, land-measurer, etc., who was buried at Woodkirk on May 19th, 1764. “He constructed a clock, and in order to make it useful to the clothiers who attended Leeds market from Earls and Hanging Heaton, Dewsbury, Chickenley, etc., he kept a lamp suspended near the face of it, and burning through the winter nights, and he would have no shutters nor curtains to his window, so that the clothiers had only to stop and look through it to know the time. Now, in our age of luxury and refinement, the accomodation thus presented by ‘Old Trash’ may seem insignificant and foolish, but I can assure the reader that it was not. The clothiers in the early part of the eighteenth century were obliged to be upon the bridge at Leeds, where the market was held, by about six o’clock in the summer, and seven in the winter; and hither they were convened by a bell anciently pertaining to a Chantry Chapel, which once was annexed to Leeds Bridge. They did not all ride, but most went on foot. They did not carry watches, for few of them had ever possessed such a valuable. They did not dine on fish, flesh, and fowl, with wine, etc., as some do now. No! no! The careful housewife wrapped up a bit of oatcake and cheese in a little checked handkerchief, and charged her husband to mind and not get above a pint of ale at ‘The Rodney.’ Would Jackson’s clock then be of no use to men who had few such in their villages? Who seldom saw a watch, but took much of their intelligence from the note of the cuckoo.”

For an extended period, the curfew bell has been a most important time-teller. The sounds are no longer heard as the signal for putting out fires, as they were in the days of the Norman kings. It is generally asserted that William the Conqueror introduced the curfew custom into England, but it is highly probable that he only enforced a law which had long been in existence in the kingdom, and which prevailed in France, Italy, Spain, and other countries on the Continent. Houses at this period were usually built of wood, and fires were frequent and often fatal, and on the whole it was a wise policy to put out household fires at night. The fire as a rule was made in a hole in the middle of the floor, and the smoke escaped through the roof. In an account of the manners and customs of the English people, drawn up in 1678, the writer states that before the Reformation, “Ordinary men’s houses, as copyholders and the like, had no chimneys, but flues like louver holes; some of them were in being when I was a boy.” In the year 1103, Henry I. modified the curfew custom. In “Liber Albus,” we find a curious picture of London life under some of the Plantagenet kings, commencing with Edward I. It was against the city regulations for armed persons to wander about the city after the ringing of the curfew bell.

We may infer from a circumstance in the closing days of William I., that from a remote period there was a religious service at eight o’clock at night. It will be remembered that the king died from the injuries received by the plunging of his horse, caused by the animal treading on some hot ashes. Shortly before his death he was roused from the stupor which clouded his mind, by the ringing of the vesper bell of a neighbouring church. He asked if it were in England and if it were the curfew bell that he heard. On being told that 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 for a while dull and heavy.”

At Tamworth, in 1390, a bye-law was passed, and “it provided that no man, woman, or servant should go out after the ringing of the curfew from one place to another unless they had a light in their hands, under pain of imprisonment.” For a long period it was the signal for closing public-houses.