Many ancient church bells disappeared in the general wreck of monastic property at the commencement of the Reformation.  Many more were broken up and sold during the Civil Wars.  In the eighteenth century another danger awaited them.  They were not converted into money for spendthrift courtiers, nor disposed of for State necessities, nor cast into cannons and other implements of war; but they came to be considered a useful fund which the guardians of churches could fall back upon.  ’Very numerous were the instances in which four bells out of five have been sold by the parish to defray churchwardens’ accounts.’[956] On the other hand, a great number of new bells were cast during the period, among which may be mentioned the great bell of St. Paul’s, 1716, and those of the University Church, Cambridge, a peal particularly admired by Handel.  The single family of Rudall of Gloucester, cast during the ninety years ending with 1774 no less than 3,594 church bells.  Bell-ringing is often spoken of as an exercise and recreation of educated men.  Hearne, the famous Oxford antiquary, was passionately fond of it.  In his diary there are constant allusions to the feats of bell-ringing which took place in Oxford, and to the intricacies and technicalities of the art.[957] The learned Samuel Parr is said to have been excessively fond of church bells,[958] and so was Robert Southey the poet.

The old superstitions connected with the inauguration of bells, and the services expected from them, had become exchanged in either case for a great deal of coarse rusticity and vulgarity.  Some pious aspiration was still in many cases graved upon the border of the metal; but often, instead of the old ‘funera plango, fulgura frango,’ &c., or the dedication to Virgin or saint, the churchwarden who ordered the bell would order also an inscription, composed by himself, commemorative of his work and office.  The doggerel was sometimes absurd enough:—­

    Samuel Knight made this ring
    In Binstead Steeple for to ding;

or,

    Thomas Eyer and John Winslade did contrive
    To cast from four bells this peal of five;

or,

    At proper times my voice I’ll raise,
    And sound to my subscribers’ praise.[959]

And when the new bell was placed in the steeple, instead of the priestly unctions and quaint ceremonies of a past age, there was too often a heathenish scene of drunkenness and revelry.  A common custom, alluded to by White of Selborne, was to fix it bottom upwards, and fill it with strong liquor.  At Checkendon, in Oxfordshire, this was attended with fatal results.  There is a tradition that one of the ringers helped himself so freely from the extemporised ale cask that he died on the spot, and was buried underneath the tower.  Bells were still sometimes rung to dissipate thunderstorms, and perhaps to drive away contagion, under the notion that their vibrations purified the air.  They were often rung on other occasions when they would have been much better silent.  At Bath no stranger of the smallest pretension to fashion could arrive without being welcomed by a peal of the Abbey bells.[960]