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SUPERSTITIOUS USES OF BELLS. 
Inscriptions on Church Bells. 
Weever, in his Funeral Monuments, mentions that — Bells had 
frequently these inscriptions on them : . 
Funera plango, Fulgura frango, 
Sabbata pango ; 
Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, Paco cruentos. 
In this little sanctuary at Westminster, king Edward III, erected a 
clochier, and placed therein three bells for the use of St. Stephen's 
chapel, about the biggest of them were cast in the, metal these 
words : 
King Edward made mee 
thirtie thousand weight and three. 
Take mee down and weigh mee, 
and more you shall fynd me. 
But these bells being to be taken down in the reign of Henry VIII. one 
writes 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 St. Pa,urs 
school stood a clochier, in which were four bells called Jesus’s bells ; 
the greatest in all England, against which Sir Miles Partridge staked 
one hundred pound, and won them of Henry VlII. at a cast of dice. 
Abroad, however, there are bells of greater magnitude. In the steeple 
of the great church at Roan in Normandy, there is a bell, unless it has 
been melted and turned into cannon, as others have been during the 
great revolutionary war, with the following inscription: 
Je suis George de Ambois, 
Qui trente cinque mille pois ; 
Mei lui qui me pesera, 
Trente six mille me trouversa. 
I am George of Ambois, 
Thirtie five thousand in pois: 
But he that shall w'eigh me. 
Thirty six thousand shall find me. 
And it is a common tradition that the bells of King’s-college chapel, 
in the university of Cambridge, were taken by Henry V. from some 
church in France, after the battle of Agincourt. They were taken 
down some years ago, and 'sold to Phelps the bell-founder in White- 
Chapel, who melted them. 
Superstitious Uses of Bells, 
Matthew Paris observes, that anciently the use of bells was 
prohibited in time of mourning, though at present they make one of 
the principal ceremonies of mourning. Mabillon adds, that it was 
