ABSTRACT
Parish bells rang for monarchs, aristocrats, patrons, gentry and clergy, as well as for godly parishioners, but they remained resolutely silent for suicides, such as Margaret Williamson of Earls Colne, denied the burial service. Bells in the early modern world heralded piety and status. Bells were even capable of sonic slander, as was the case in Shillingford in Oxfordshire in 1621 when Ralph Norton caused 'the bel to be tould in mockage of one that was not sicke'. More troubling though than the mocking of the living were the sounds of the diabolical that echoed into the landscape of Earls Colne, worrying the ears of the godly in the late 1620s and early 1630s. The unsettling and diabolical soundscape of the Priory was only stilled when 'Mr. Thomas Shepheard with some other Ministers, and good People, spent a Night in Prayer, and had some respect for the place, serving God, to cast out the Devil.
