"But these bells being taken down in the reign of Henry VIII., one wrote underneath with a coal:—
"But Henry the Eight,
Will bait me of my weight."
This last distich alludes to a fact mentioned by Stow, in his survey of London—ward of Farringdon Within to wit—that near to St. Paul's School stood a clochier, in which were four bells, called Jesus' bells, the greatest in all England, against which Sir Miles Partridge staked an hundred pounds, and won them of Henry VIII., at a cast of dice.
Matthew Paris observes, that anciently the use of bells was prohibited in time of mourning. Mabillon adds, that it was an old practice to ring the bells for persons about to expire, to advertise the people to pray for them—whence our passing-bell. The passing-bell, indeed, was anciently for two purposes—one to bespeak the prayers of all good Christians for a soul just departing; the other to drive away the evil spirits who were supposed to stand at the bed's foot.
This dislike of spirits to bells is mentioned in the Golden Legend, by Wynkyn de Worde. "It is said, evill spirytes that ben in the regyon of thayre, doubte moche when they here the belles rongen; and this is the cause why the belles ben rongen when it thondreth, and when grete tempeste and outrages of wether happen; to the ende that the fiends and wycked spirytes shold be abashed and flee, and cease of the movynge of tempeste." Another author observes, that the custom of ringing bells at the approach of thunder is of some antiquity; but that the design was not so much to shake the air, and so dissipate the thunder, as to call the people to church, to pray that the parish might be preserved from the terrible effect of lightning.
Warner, in his history of Hampshire, enumerates the virtues of a bell, by translating the lines from the "Helpe to Discourse:—
"Men's death's I tell by doleful knell;
Lightning and thunder I break asunder.