It is historically interesting to know that the burial registers, by the increased number of interments in some of the long past years, point unmistakably to the prevalence in Norwich at those times of the dread Pestilence or Plague, which is recorded as having ravaged the city from time to time. Thus, in 1603, no less than 112 persons were buried here; and in 1666, some 79—both of these “Plague years”—instead of a normal average of twenty or thirty. As you may suppose, I (the Tower) shared acutely in the distress which then reigned in the city, intensified as it was to me by the fact of three or four burials occasionally taking place here in the same day. In some other years, an increase of burials may probably have arisen from this place of mortal rest having been a favourite one, and, therefore, selected for the interment of some who had not been resident in the parish. This was certainly so in the fifty years preceding the closure of the churchyard, when fifty, sixty, or seventy were often annually interred here. But to return to my bells. The perpetuation of the old custom of ringing each night what is called the _Curfew Bell_ in my Tower is well known to us all. This Curfew ringing is now an anachronism, but it doubtless was a great boon at the time of its foundation, seeing that so many legacies were left in various places, as here, for the purpose of having a “Curfew” rung each night in perpetuity. My Curfew Bell, instituted and endowed in 1457, by Mr. John Colston, and who was buried in St. Giles’s Church, has now rung continuously for some 450 years. And although some people may think this evening tolling of a bell for a quarter of an hour a nuisance, it has in this particular case this merit, that it acts, or has done, as a sort of daily almanac, seeing that the day of the month is told at the end of the quarter of an hour’s ringing, each evening, by a number of strokes on a different bell, corresponding to the day of the month. The name “Curfew,” you doubtless know to be derived from the French _Couvre-feu_, or cover fire. And also that the custom in olden times of a public ringing of a bell, or sounding a horn, for the putting out of fires and retiring into houses for the night, arose from the out-door dangers of those less civilised times, and from the inflammable nature of many of the wooden and thatched houses then existing. One such fire in Norwich (in 1507) is said to have destroyed seven hundred houses, including many in my own parish. Who does not know Gray’s lines on this Curfew custom? “The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.” And we doubtless also remember Longfellow’s beautiful verses on this old custom:— “Solemnly, mournfully, Dealing its dole, The Curfew Bell Is beginning to toll.