THE CHURCH BELLS OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE.* W run:4 the last thirty

years a new subdivision or sect of antiquaries has risen up, known, where known at all, by the name of Bell- hunters. Like other divergents, these newly-invented votaries make not much account of the accustomed amenities and parapher- nalia of the main or parent body. They do not deliver many

• The alurrh Bells of Cambridge. By I. 4. Raven, B.D. Tymois, Lowestoft. speeches or read many communications at archaeological reunions, neither do they esteem a round of antiquarian picnics as business, whatever maybe the eminence of the F.S.A.'s who play Mr. Cook to the dilettante tourists. They have discovered an odd little subject which, as they consider, has been unaccountably overlooked by all previous antiquarians, and whimsical as their choice is, they go at it for its own sake and with a will. This hobby of theirs is nothing more than church bells. The grand ambition of a bell- hunter is to monograph the bells of his particular county, and compile an account of all their founders. Two counties, Wiltshire and Sussex, have been already done, and Mr. Raven has now made a third with Cambridgeshire. Almost every church bell, ancient or modern, bears some inscription and devices. The bell-hunters note these inscriptions, taking rubbings or " squeezes" of anything elaborate. They collate the results of these belfry visits with more matter raked from the church- wardens' accounts, town archives, old will registers, and other of the countless uncataloguable pasturages of Dryasdust, and so identify the old bell-founders and their castings. This is certainly harmless enough, in all conscience, and if a number of parsons, young barristers, and others find the pursuit an agreeable pastime, at least they might spend their leisure hours worse. Nor is it without some attributes which recommend it to the fancies of many educated men blessed with an average amount of physical hardihood. The belfry visits involve a good deal of difficult, and occasionally dangerous, clambering, especially in remote country churches where there are no tower-stairs, or where dry-rot has taken uninterrupted possession of the cross-beams amid which the bells are hung. Sometimes the bell-hunter has to carry a ladder from the nearest farm-yard ; he has even had to swarm up a bell-rope before he could gain access to a crazy bell-chamber which nobody was known to have visited within the memory of anyone living in the parish. All these contingencies may impart to the quest some of the advantages of Alpine work, without the great drawback of expense. Again, the quest is followed for the most part on foot, amid the beauties of English rural scenery ; and in these days of cheap foreign travel and crowded British " watering-places," comparatively few people really know how much beauty there is in the average English country, where the tourists do not go. And there is room for some acuteness in marshalling the disjointed bits of heterogeneous evidence by which particular inscriptions are assigned to particular founders.

The ingenious author of the " Competition Wallah" notices that certain popular topics are invariably treated with the same little apocryphal preludes,—as surely as a book on dogs is ushered in by the description of Theseus' hounds as Shakespeare painted them : which the Competition Wallah says is as though a peerage were to begin by enumerating Duke Alvah, Duke Jetheth, and the other Dukes of Edom. Bells are not a popular topic, but their literature possesses a similar gambit. The reader is usually informed that church-bells were first used about 600 B.C. at Nola, in Campania ; a statement which rests upon the mere fact that " nola" and " campana" are the mediaeval Latin for an article unknown to the Latin of Cicero. Mr. Raven, indeed, has spared us the gambit, for which we thank him.

In truth, the origin of big bells is food for mere conjecture ; nor can anyone determine the date when the first of them boomed over fen and forest iu our island. They had, however, become a regular institution before the Conquest, for the few church- towers which all sides agree in pronouncing to be genuine Saxon work were obviously constructed to carry peals. Of these the tower of Bene't Church, Cambridge, is an excellent specimen. The sister island possesses a few bells which, as far as their rudeness goes, might be of any date this side of St. Patrick. From a wood-cut which Mr. Raven gives of one in the Archbishop of Armagh's collection, they seem to resemble the old-fashioned, deep carpet-bag, split down the sides, transmuted into latten or some such metal, and then joined together with copper rivets. A chronicler says that Dunstan gave bells to the Western Churches ; probably he made them himself. The ecclesiastics of the early middle-ages were the only scientific craftsmen, as they were the only lawyers, of their day. Not very long ago the seal of Sandra de Gloucester, one of these monastic founders, was fished up out of the Thames. Very little is known about any of them except that their bells, so far as we can judge of them from the surviving specimens, were if anything superior to the very best that are pro- duced now-a-days. On one of the stained-glass windows of York Minster the whole process of mediaeval bell-founding is depicted, ab ova usque ad mala: it bas been reserved for Mr. Raven to un- earth from the archives of Ely Cathedral a piece of equally interest- ing information, viz., the complete accompts, from the sacristan's book, of all charges incurred in casting four bells called "Jesus," " John," " Mary," and " 1Valsingham." The biggest of these was " Jesus " (32 cwt.) ; next came " John" (27 cwt.) ; while " Mary " was only in the third place, with 21 cwt. Nota bene that when

peals of bells were scarce, each received a name ; and the baptism of the bells was a sufficiently imposing ceremony. These Ely bells were cast in 19 and 20 Edward III. (1342) ; and besides the above four there were two smaller bells, " Peter " and " Bounce." Ingulphus gives the names of the Croyland Abbey bells destroyed

at the fire there in 1190 (said to have been the first complete peal), viz., "Pega," " Begs," " Tatwin," " Turketyl," " Bettelin,''

" Bartholomew," and " Guthlac." The bells of Oseney were named "Douce," " Clement," " Austin," " Hauctecter," " Gabriel," and "John." Sometimes the largest of the peal is spoken of as "Rex " or "Dominus," and it is recorded that a bell-hunter whose enthusiasm

outran his Latinity once insisted that the true rendering of Sit Nomen Domini Benedictum (a not uncommon bell-inscription) is : —"Let the big bell's name be Benedict."

Though almost every bell bears some legend or device, the old founders scarcely ever, as the moderns do, recorded their own names and the dates. Mr. Tyssen in his " Church-Bells of Sussex"

mentions a bell at Duncton inscribed "Dn FLOTHE A. . . .E LA HAGVE FET LAN erns ix.," which is probably the oldest dated bell in England. The English founders began dating about 1570, and the names begin a trifle earlier. In Cambridgeshire Mr.

Raven finds nothing dated earlier than 1564. Before the Refor- mation the inscriptions were usually, though not invariably, religions, and the most popular form was a leonine hexameter, thus :—

"Stella Maria Maris Suceurre Piissima Nobis." " Sum Rosa Pulsate Mnndi Katerina Vocata." "Cell Det Manus Xps Qui Regnat Et Unus." "Fae Margareta Nobis Hee 31unera Leta." "Voce Mea Viva Depello Cuncta Nociva."

" Me Mellor Vera Non Est Campine Sub Ere."

The capital letters and the ornamental stops between words are often beautifully executed, and are a great means for identifying the founders of undated bells. The older founders also some- times used foundry stamps ; thus the Brasyers of Norwich, who blinded splendid bells for several generations, stamped them all with a crown between three bells on a shield sprigged ; and another, William ffoundor, used a chevron between three founder's lave- pots. These signs, however, are not always conclusive evidence, because the stamps of an old founder and other parts of his plant sometimes found their way into the possession of a later one. The invocation inscriptions cease, of course, with the Reformation, but pious staves.wers still inscribed, though to some small extent the inscriptions, like the Abbey lands-, became secularized. The post- Reformation posies are often very odd doggrel ; witness the fol- lowing, which Mr. Raven quotes from the tenor of Bene't Church, Cambridge :—

" This bell was breaks and cast againe

As plainly doth apeare, John Draper made me in 1618, Wich tyme churchwardens were Edward Dixson for the one which stode close to his tacklin, And he that was his partner there was Alexander Jacklin."

Prom Whittlesea, St. Mary, in the same county, is cited the fol- lowing sentiment, cast on the second bell there, at the instance of some uncompromising Churchman :—

" Prosperity to the Established Church of England and no Encourage- ment to Enthusiasm."

But we set out professing that we were going to review Mr. Raven's book on the Church Bells of Cambridgeshire, and as yet, we have only given a popular account of church bells in general. The reader would scarcely thank us, we imagine, if we were to criticize minutely Mr. Raven's observations on certain foundry marks attributed to William ffoundor, or his reason for believing that a certain mark found on the treble bell at St. Botolph's, Cambridge, dates prior to the year 1407. We have said what

there is to be said about the hobby itself, and if anyone wishes to see how Mr. Raven rides it, we had rather refer him to that

gentleman's own performance. He has chronicled the inscriptions of all the bells in his county (197 towers in all, including the college chapels in the University), gives numerous woodcuts of foundry stamps and marks, and is very ingenious in his translation of the Ely Cathedral accompta before mentioned. Interesting the book can hardly be pronounced, except for those who are or wish to be inoculated with the bell-hunting mania. Mr. Raven has also devoted a few pages to a really intelligible exposition of the principles of change-ringing. Two hundred years ago change-

ringing was not only a popular, but a somewhat fashionable exercise, and even down to the opening of the present century many gentlemen took a pride in being accomplished change-ringers. At the present time, the art is not so popular with the middle classes as with the steadier portion of the lower

class. The general notion of change-ringers is, perhaps, derived from parish-ringers, tipsy janglers whom true ringers hold. in

much contempt. Such a notion, however, is the reverse of

accurate, for no one can master the accomplishment who has not a cool brain, besides a good ear, a steady hand, and plenty of perse-

verance. We, as a nation, are rather fond of sports which com- bine with bodily exercise some moderate employment of the mind.

No man is ever a good stroke-oar who cannot keep the perfect command of his wits when his body is in smart exercise, and this

is precisely the qualification indispensable to a good change-ringer. Parsons often complain of their ringers as the sharpest thorn in

the clerical flesh. Our recommendation is that all country parsons (we are not sure that in towns much ringing would be tolerated) should themselves learn the art, and educate their ringers into real and proper ringing. We have read much in popular novels of the moral influence of muscularly accomplished curates. Fancy the

elevated stand-point of a rector who could step into his own belfry and ring off some few score " courses" of " Graudsire Caters," "Stedman Triples," or " Oxford Treble Bob." We must not, however, be understood as going quite so far as one Drabicius (De Ccelo et Ccelesti State, Metz, 1618), an author who devotes no less than 428 pages to proving that one of the employments of the

blessed iu Heaven will be the constant ringing of bells.

Before we take our leave of the work under notice, it will be not amiss to' note that its author has raked up the composer of those extremely beautiful chimes which all Cambridge men remember at Great St. Mary's, and which have been borrowed at the Royal Exchange, and in scores of other places (Mr. Raven gives the music, for which we are much obliged to him). It seems that in 1793, when Crotch was one of the pupils of Dr. Randall, then Regius Professor of Music, the Regius Professor of Laws, Dr. Jowett, was something of a practical mechanician. Of this Jowett it was said :—

" A little garden little Jewett made, And fenced it with a little palisade ;

If you would know the taste of little Jewett, This little garden won't a little show it."

Jowett appears to be entitled to the credit of the clockwork, and Crotch to that of the music, " It was said," says Mr. Raven, by a fellow-pupil of Crotch's, "that when the chimes were first heard, they were thought so strange that they were nicknamed Jowett's Hornpipe.' "