Since a guard and a garden could not defend;
For so near to the Court they will never endure
Any witness to show how their time they misspend.
In the court-yard facing the Banqueting-house was another curious dial, set up in 1669 by order of Charles II. It was invented by one Francis Hall, alias Lyne, a Jesuit, and professor of mathematics at Liège. This dial consisted of five stages rising in a pyramidal form, and bearing several vertical and reclining dials, globes cut into planes, and glass bowls; showing, “besides the houres of all kinds,” “many things also belonging to geography, astrology, and astronomy, by the sun’s shadow made visible to the eye.” Among the pictures were portraits of the king, the two queens, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert. Father Lyne published a description of this dial, which consists of seventy-three parts: it is illustrated with seventeen plates: the details are condensed in No. 400 of the Mirror. About 1710, William Allingham, a mathematician in Canon-row, asked 500l. to repair this dial: it was last seen by Vertue, the artist and antiquary, at Buckingham House.
The bricky towers of St. James’s palace had their Sun-dials; and in the gardens of Kensington palace and Hampton Court palace are to this day superb dials.
Upon a house-front in the Terrace, New Palace Yard, Westminster, is a Sun-dial, having the motto from Virgil, “Discite justitiam, moniti,” which had probably been inscribed upon the old clock-tower of the palace, in reference to its having been built with a fine that had been levied on the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for altering a record.
The Inns of Court, where time runs its golden sand, have retained a few of their Sun-dials. In Lincoln’s Inn, on two of the old gables, are: 1. A southern dial, restored in 1840, which shows the hours by its gnomon, from 6 A.M. to 4 P.M., and is inscribed, “Ex hoc monumento pendet æternitas.” 2. A western dial, restored in 1794 and 1848, from the different situation of its plane, only shows the hours from noon till night: inscription, “Quam redit nescitis horam.” And in Serle’s-court (now New-square), on the west side, was a dial inscribed, “Publica privatis secernite, sacra prophanis.”
Gray’s Inn has lost its Sun-dials: but in the gardens was a dial, opposite Verulam Buildings, not far from Bacon’s summer-house; and the turret of the great Hall had formerly a southern declining dial, with this motto, “Lux diei, lex Dei.”
Furnival’s Inn had its garden and dial, which disappeared when the old Inn buildings were taken down in 1818, and the Inn rebuilt.
Staple Inn had upon its Hall a well-kept dial, above a luxuriant fig-tree.