The older bells have seen varied service; they have been hung in church towers and in public places; they have sounded the note of alarm, and given the signal for historic assemblies; they have rung the death-knell of illustrious persons, and in rural England have summoned many generations of worshippers to Divine Service.
The bells, the loud clanging of which can be heard afar, are, however, the outcome of a gradual process of development. The evolution from the handbell to the turret bell was doubtless slow.
The simple handbell in its early stages was only a slight advance beyond the bells hung round the necks of the leaders of the flock, which were made by the village smith. Such primitive, and not always musical, bells were used from the earliest times to summon servants and workers in the field and tenderers of the flock. The practice dates from Biblical days, for it was an early Eastern custom for sheiks and patriarchs from their tent doors to summon their followers, or give the danger signal, by means of a bell.
Bible records tell of bells of gold suspended from the robes of priests, and of their use in temple worship. From that time onward they have been associated with religious ceremonials. In later times the early Christians employed bells of copper and brass and consecrated them to their use. Thus musical peals, rung collectively or individually, have sounded for all kinds of sacred rites. The bell—a mere handbell—was soon fixed over a doorway, or in some convenient place where it could with greater ease be rung by a cord. Then came the suggestion of larger bells, afterwards covered over, and finally hung in steeple or tower, like the campanile (a tower separated from the church) so often met with in Italy.
The church bell is said to have been introduced here by Paulinus, the Bishop of Mona, in A.D. 400. The next record of importance is the historical account of the Venerable Bede, who describes bells hung in towers—that was in A.D. 670. Some two hundred years after Bede's days a peal was rung for the first time in England, in the Abbey of Crowland. The pioneers of bell-ringing upon bells tuned in harmony were the ringers who produced such charming results with the bells of King's College, Cambridge.
The bells of churches were rung for ecclesiastical and for national and parochial purposes. There was the vesper bell for evensong, and there was the curfew bell which rang in obedience to the "lights out" enactments of Norman days (see Couvre de feu, [p. 113]).
Of the minor uses of bells there are many. In Tudor days small bells were familiar objects in hunting. They formed part of the equipment of the hawk or falcon. Of these we read in Shakespeare's works—of the "'larum bell and of sweet bells jangled out of tune." In Othello there is a record of the "snorting citizen with his bell."
