For an extended period, the curfew bell has been a most important time-teller. The sounds are no longer heard as the signal for putting out fires, as they were in the days of the Norman kings. It is generally asserted that William the Conqueror introduced the curfew custom into England, but it is highly probable that he only enforced a law which had long been in existence in the kingdom, and which prevailed in France, Italy, Spain, and other countries on the Continent. Houses at this period were usually built of wood, and fires were frequent and often fatal, and on the whole it was a wise policy to put out household fires at night. The fire as a rule was made in a hole in the middle of the floor, and the smoke escaped through the roof. In an account of the manners and customs of the English people, drawn up in 1678, the writer states that before the Reformation, "Ordinary men's houses, as copyholders and the like, had no chimneys, but flues like louver holes; some of them were in being when I was a boy." In the year 1103, Henry I. modified the curfew custom. In "Liber Albus," we find a curious picture of London life under some of the Plantagenet kings, commencing with Edward I. It was against the city regulations for armed persons to wander about the city after the ringing of the curfew bell.
We may infer from a circumstance in the closing days of William I., that from a remote period there was a religious service at eight o'clock at night. It will be remembered that the king died from the injuries received by the plunging of his horse, caused by the animal treading on some hot ashes. Shortly before his death he was roused from the stupor which clouded his mind, by the ringing of the vesper bell of a neighbouring church. He asked if it were in England and if it were the curfew bell that he heard. On being told that he was in his "own Normandy," and the bell was for evening prayer, he "charged them bid the monks pray for his soul, and remained for a while dull and heavy."
At Tamworth, in 1390, a bye-law was passed, and "it provided that no man, woman, or servant should go out after the ringing of the curfew from one place to another unless they had a light in their hands, under pain of imprisonment." For a long period it was the signal for closing public-houses.