In the Middle Ages, so much regard was paid to ringing the couvre-feu, that land was occasionally left to pay for it. This feeling appears to have been not altogether extinct, even so late as the close of the sixteenth century, for in Bishop Hall’s “Fourth Satire” occurs the following:
“Who ever gives a paire of velvet shooes
To th’ Holy Rood, or liberally allowes
But a new rope to ring the couvre-feu bell,
But he desires that his great deed may dwell,
Or graven in the chancel-window glasse,
Or in his lasting tombe of plated brasse.”
In the churchwardens’ and chamberlains’ accounts of Kingston-on-Thames, occurs the following item:
| “1651. For ringing the curfew bell for one year | £1 10.” |
According to the Hon. Daines Barrington, curfew is written curphour “in an old Scottish poem, published in 1770, with many others, from the MSS. of George Bannatyne, who collected them in the year 1568.” It is observed in the notes which accompany these poems, that, by “Act 144, Parliament 13, James I., this bell was to be rung in boroughs at nine in the evening, and that the hour was afterwards changed to ten, at the solicitation of the wife of James VI.’s favourite, James Stewart.” This lends some countenance to what might otherwise seem erroneous in the works of the poets and dramatists. Thus, in the old play of the Merry Devil of Edmonton (1631), the sexton exclaims:
“Well, ’tis nine a clocke, ’tis time to ring curfew.”
We fear, however, that Shakespeare cannot be held free from mistake and uncertainty in his fixing of the curfew hour. Thus, in Measure for Measure, the Duke says:
“The best and wholesom’st spirits of the night
Invellop you, good Provost! Who call’d here o’ late?
Provost: None since the curfew rang.”
In The Tempest, Prospero says:
“You whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew.”