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Pictured above: The bells in Boston's Old North Church.
Let freedom ring! Did you know that you can listen to the bells in the Old North Church in Boston online?
The bells at Old North Church were installed in 1745. Five years later, 15-year-old Paul Revere was part of a group of teenage boys who were contracted to ring the eight bells in the steeple. The bells are still rung today in an intricate mathematical sequence of changes, a traditional English art called “change-ringing”. Likely, these bells rang on October 25 in 1780 to commemorate an important event in the early days of the Commonwealth, the day that the Massachusetts Constitution first became effective.
The ringing of church bells in the 18th century was an important means of maintaining social cohesion and expressing the “politics of joy.” The peals rung at Old North Church “marked the emergence and development of national culture.” “A bell reproduces an old sound as surely as a document reproduces an old thought.” (Quotations are from How Early America Sounded by Richard Cullen Rath (Cornell University Press, 2003)).
Below are more resources where you can find information on change-ringing:
- “The Bells at Old North”, Old North Church, Nov. 26, 2019.
- The Nine Tailors: Changes Rung on an Old Theme in Two Short Touches and Two Full Peals, Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery in print.
As Trial Court Law Librarians, it is our mission to bring the law to the people. We might think of heralding our Constitution in the way that the bells were ringing in the 18th century, in the spirit of our forefathers. The 1780 Massachusetts Constitution is the founding document from which all subsequent state law was written.
Authored by Barbara Schneider.