This hath been a fair and beautiful church, but of late years, since the surrender of their lands to Edward VI., greatly blemished by the building of lower tenements on the north side thereof towards the high street, in place of a green churchyard, whereby the church is darkened, and other ways annoyed. The fair new steeple, or bell tower of this church, was begun to be built in the year 1421, which being finished, and a fair ring of five bells therein placed, a sixth bell[163] was added, and given by John Whitwell, Isabel his wife, and William Rus, alderman, and goldsmith, about the year 1430, which bell, named “Rus,” nightly at eight of the clock, and otherwise for knells, and in peals, rung by one man, for the space of one hundred and sixty years, of late overhauled by four or five at once, hath been thrice broken, and new cast within the space of ten years, to the charges of that parish more than one hundred marks. And here a note of this steeple: as I have oft heard my father report, upon St. James’ night, certain men in the loft next under the bells, ringing of a peal, a tempest of lightning and thunder did arise, an ugly shapen sight appeared to them, coming in at the south window, and lighted on the north, for fear whereof they all fell down, and lay as dead for the time, letting the bells ring and cease of their own accord; when the ringers came to themselves, they found certain stones of the north window to be razed and scratched, as if they had been so much butter, printed with a lion’s claw; the same stones were fastened there again, and so remain till this day. I have seen them oft, and have put a feather or small stick into the holes where the claws had entered three or four inches deep. At the same time certain main timber posts at Queene Hith were scratched and cleft from the top to the bottom; and the pulpit cross in Powle’s churchyard was likewise scratched, cleft, and overturned. One of the ringers lived in my youth, whom I have oft heard to verify the same to be true.