| GLORIA IN ALTISSIMIS DEO 1731 | |
| ED HIRD JOH WILSON GEO | |
| HE HIRD WIL RIGG MACKERETH | |
| CHURCH | E Seller |
| WARDENS | Ebor |
| in. dia. | |
| SOLI DEO GLORIA 1731 | E Seller |
| Ebor |
Each bell carries besides on the waist below the founder's name, the arms and crest of the Flemings of Rydal. Arms: Gules, a fret, argent. Crest: A serpent nowed, holding a garland of olives and vines in his mouth, all proper. Motto: Pax, Copia, Sapientia, on a shield 51⁄4 by 33⁄4 inches.
Arms of the Lo. Fleming Family on the Great & Middle Bells.
Information about our bell-founder may be found in Mr. J. E. Poppleton's Bells in the West Riding of Yorkshire.[148] At the Restoration, and for nearly a century afterwards, a firm of Sellers worked at a foundry in Jubbergate, York. William, the first known of the family, founded a bell which yet hangs in Eskdale Church, Cumberland. Edward, who followed, died in 1724, and was succeeded by his son, the founder of the Grasmere bells. The second Edward used the same signatory mark as his father, and it was the custom of both to give, after the Latin inscription—and provided there was no donor—the names of the rector and churchwardens who were in office at the time of the founding. The Fleming coat-of-arms undoubtedly stands for Dr. George Fleming, then rector.
A catastrophe is disclosed by the presentment of 1798, when the "least bell" was "burst and unringable." It remained in this condition for eleven years, when a private individual came to the rescue. Its inscription runs:—
COPIA PAX SAPIENTIA Re-cast at the expence of Mrs. Dorothy Knott 1809 T MEARS & Son of London
Dorothy Knott was probably daughter of John Knott, of the Howe in Applethwaite, born 1728, and of the family who removed from Grasmere to Rydal.[149] From her benefaction to the school, we learn that she lived in Ambleside, where spinster ladies of means were wont to settle.
The firm of Mears, who cast the bell, worked at the noted old foundry in Whitechapel.[150] If this bell went to London, its journey was a long one. But the turnpike roads were now made, which must have facilitated carriage, and the bell would arrive by what is now the Wishing Gate road. An old man living in Grasmere in 1886 used to tell of his grandmother, who remembered the church bells having been brought by sledge over the top of White Moss, then the only road into the valley.[151] These must have been Seller's bells, for it is just possible for three generations to bridge the 155 years; and this traditional touch helps us to realize the remoteness of the valley in those days, which no wheeled traffic could reach.