“St. Paul, pray for the souls of Henry Pudsey and Margaret his wife.”
In these cases we are enabled to gain a clue to the date of the bell, a piece of information rarely found given in mediaeval times. Henry Pudsey, for instance, died about 1510. There is an interesting bell at Aldbourne, in Wiltshire, dated 1516, with a prayer for the souls of Richard Goddard of Upham, his two wives and his children. It is said that this is the only known record of his double marriage, though the family is an old one, well known in those parts.
English inscriptions are very rare, but when found are often very quaint, as at Snowshill, in Gloucestershire—
“IN NAME OF TRINITE; GILLIS [Giles’] BELLE MEN CALLE ME”;
or at Alkborough, in Lincolnshire—
“JESU FOR YI MODIR [the Mother’s] SAKE SAVE AL YE SAULS THAT ME GART MAKE [had made] AMEN.”
The Reformation brought about a great, though not an immediate but gradual, change in the character of bell inscriptions. We often find about this time the whole or a portion of the alphabet; and it has been supposed that the founder wished to use his old stamps, but was afraid of giving offence by adhering to the old style of inscription, and so arranged the letters in a fashion to which none could object! But right through the Reformation period, the reign of Elizabeth, and the ensuing Stuart period, it is by no means rare to find the old formulae repeated. It is possible that ignorant founders reproduced them when recasting bells, without realizing their meaning, or that they trusted to the inaccessibility of belfries, not to be found out! Still the fact remains, not only that more “Popish” inscriptions were left intact by Reformer and Puritan on bells than on any other part of the fabric of churches, but also that prejudice and fanaticism here seems to have played a smaller part. Yet there are indications of Protestant zeal on the part of some seventeenth-century founders. Tobie Norris of Stamford (1603–1626) is fond of proclaiming—
NON SONO ANIMABVS MORTVORVM SED AVRIBVS VIVENTIVM
“I sound not for the souls of the dead but for the ears of the living”;