294 6 Lincolne’s Lincoln Cathedral had a very large bell, Great Tom; the poet refers also to John Williams (1582–1650), Bishop of Lincoln, who had opposed Laud’s policies and received a hero’s welcome on his release from imprisonment in the Tower in 1640

294 11 Bum-Bom Great Tom bell in Christ Church, Oxford, originally bore an inscription describing its sound as ‘Bim Bom’ 12 Bull punning on ‘bull’ in the sense of an injunction from Rome; Laud’s reforming measures were widely seen as a reversion to Roman Catholicism 18 lesse by farre may refer to schemes for a ‘reduced’, modified episcopacy