And these bells, Hautclerc, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel et John, as they are named in the hexameter, are the famous Osney bells, which were held to be the finest in England in the days when bell-founding was a serious art and a solemn rite, when bells were baptized and anointed, exorcised and blessed by the bishop, so that they might have power to drive the devil out of the air, to calm tempests, to extinguish fire, and to recreate even the dead. They are hung within the Bell-Tower (above the hall-staircase of Christ Church), which Mr Bodley has built about the wooden structure which contains them, and which he intended to surmount with a lofty and intricate wooden superstructure.
But Tom is placed in his own tower, over the entrance from S. Aldate’s into the great Quad to which he has given his name.
The lower story of Tom Tower was built by Wolsey (the Faire Gate it was called, and the cardinal’s statue is over the gateway), but the octagonal cupola which gives to it its characteristic appearance was added by Sir Christopher Wren. Tom weighed 17,000 pounds, and bore the inscription:—
In Thomæ laude resono Bim Bom sine fraude,
but he was re-cast in 1680 (7 ft. 1 in. in diameter, and weighing over 7 tons). The inscription records:—
Magnus Thomas Clusius Oxoniensis renatus, Ap. 8, 1680.
Translated here, he has rung out, since the anniversary of the Restoration on the 29th of May 1684, nightly without intermission, save on that night some years ago when the undergraduates of Christ Church cut the rope as a protest when they were not allowed to attend the ball given at Blenheim in honour of the coming of age of the Duke of Marlborough, and curfew did not ring that night.
There is one other monument in Oxford which is connected by popular tradition with the last Abbot of Osney, and that is the exceedingly picturesque old house[9] in S. Aldate’s. Richly and quaintly carved, this old timber mansion is known as the Bishop’s Palace, and is said to have been the residence of Bishop King, after the See was transferred from Osney to Christ Church.
