As I mean to deduce the progress of the art of clock-making in a regular chronological series, the next mention I find of horologia is in Rymer’s Fœdera, where there is a protection of Edward III., in the year 1368, to three Dutchmen, who were Orlogiers. The title of this protection is, “De horologiorum artificio exercendo;” and I hope to have sufficiently proved that there was no necessity of procuring mere dial-makers at this time.
Clock-makers however were really wanted at this period of the fourteenth century, as may be inferred from the following lines of Chaucer, when he speaks of a cock’s crowing:—
Full sikerer was his crowing in his loge,
As is a clock, or any abbey orloge[1098]:
by which, as I conceive at least, our old poet means to say, that the crowing was as certain as a bell or abbey-clock[1099]. For though we at present ask so often, “What is it o’clock?” meaning the time-measurer, yet I should rather suppose, that in the fourteenth century the term clock was often applied to a bell which was rung at certain periods, determined by an hour-glass or a sun-dial. Nor have I been able to stumble upon any passage which alludes to a clock, by that name, earlier than the thirteenth year of the reign of Henry VIII.[1100] The abbey orloge (or clock) however must have been not uncommon when Chaucer wrote these lines; and from clocks beginning to be in use we might have had occasion for more artificers in this branch, though it should seem that we had Englishmen, who pretended at least to understand it, because the protection of Edward III. above-cited, directs that the persons to whom it was granted, should not be molested whilst they were thus employed.
I now pass on to a famous astronomical clock, made by one of our countrymen in the reign of Richard II., the account of which I have extracted from Leland. Richard of Wallingford was son of a smith, who lived at that town, and who, from his learning and ingenuity, became abbot of St. Albans. Leland, speaking of him, says, “Cum jam per amplas licebat fortunas, voluit illustri aliquo opere, non modo ingenii, verum etiam eruditionis, ac artis excellentis, miraculum ostendere. Ergo talem horologii fabricam magno labore, majore sumtu, arte vero maxima, compegit, qualem non habet tota Europa, mea opinione, secundam, sive quis cursum solis ac lunæ, seu fixa sidera notet, sive iterum maris incrementa et decrementa[1101].” Richard of Wallingford wrote also a treatise on this clock, “Ne tam insignis machina vilesceret errore monachorum, aut incognito structuræ ordine silesceret.” From what hath been above stated, it appears that this astronomical clock continued to go in Leland’s time, who was born at the latter end of Henry VII.’s reign, and who speaks of a tradition, that this famous piece of mechanism was called Albion by the inventor.
Having thus endeavoured to prove that clocks were made in England from the time of Edward I. to that of Richard II., it is not essential to my principal purpose to deduce them lower through the successive reigns; but when I have shortly stated what I happened to have found with regard to this useful invention in other parts of Europe, I shall attempt to show why they were not more common in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The citation from Dante, which I have before relied upon, shows that they were not unknown in Italy during that period; and M. Falconet, in Mémoires de Litterature, informs us, that a James Dondi, in the fourteenth century, assumed from a clock made by him for the tower of a palace, the name of Horologius, which was afterwards borne by his descendants.
In France, or what is now so called, Froissart mentions, that during the year 1332, Philip the Hardy, duke of Burgundy, removed from Courtray to his capital at Dijon a famous clock which struck the hours, and was remarkable for its mechanism[1102]. The great clock at Paris was put up in the year 1370, during the reign of Charles V., having been made by Charles de Wic[1103] a German. Carpentier, in his supplement to Du Cange, cites a decision of the parliament of Paris in the year 1413, in which Henry Bye, one of the parties, is styled Gubernator Horologii palatii nostri Parisiis[1104]. About the same time also the clock at Montargis was made, with the following inscription:—
Charles le Quint (sc. de France)
Me fit par Jean de Jouvence.
The last word seems to be the name of a Frenchman.