The gifts of the Carter family to the Church stirred the parishioners to the putting in order of the huge single bell, the largest in Cornwall, which had long hung mute in the belfry. The quaint motto "_Complures populo, suppetit una Deo_," runs round the base of the bell, with the date of its casting in 1771. This motto may be roughly translated "The people desire many bells, but one suffices God." This curious motto supplies a hint at the cause of the casting of this bell; the event happened during the incumbency of the Reverend Edward Marshall. It seems that it was the custom of those days for the bell ringers of the neighbouring village Churches to exchange visits of friendly rivalry. On these occasions quantities of strong waters found their way into the belfries, and their fumes into the brains of the ringers, with the result that the bells "In the startled ear of night, Too much horrified to speak They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune: Leaping, higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavour, Now, now, to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells, Of despair! How they clang and clash and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air!" On one of these uproarious occasions the tenor bell broke away from its fastenings, and instead of sitting by the pale-faced moon, it came crashing through the belfry floor on to the flags at the base of the tower, nearly annihilating in the process some of the exuberant ringers. The nocturnal clash and roar seems, if tradition speaks true, to have frequently lasted all through the night. On New Year's Eve especially it was the custom to continue ringing the bells through the majority of the hours of darkness that remained after midnight. There being no regulations as to the hour of closing public houses in those days, on these occasions of festivity they remained open until all hours of the morning, and strong waters thus passed freely between the public house and the belfry, the distance being so short between them. The endless jangle of the midnight bells, it is said, got on the nerves of the Reverend Edward Marshall; more possibly his sense of decency and fitness was stirred by these wild doings. To remedy the evil he took the drastic action of melting the four mediæval bells down into the present big one on the fall of the tenor bell from its fastening in the tower, much against the wishes of his parishioners, as the motto round the base of the bell more than hints. The process of recasting took place in the large field on the south side of the Church. This drastic operation only seems to have made matters worse, as on the following New Year's Eve, a lusty band of Tinners took possession of the belfry, and the awful "boom," "boom" of the big bell, in ceaseless iteration, sounded out over