The watch was an article of utility that became an article of fashion, hence was woven into a jewel. Queen Elizabeth I of England owned more than two dozen watches, some dangling from her girdle, one at her wrist. Four of them were gifts from one courtier, the Earl of Leicester. All were elaborately designed in various shapes, with cameos or many jewels. They were changed according to the costume. The Queen had a special page whose duty it was to wind them.
Princess Sophia
Even more watches were in the possession of Sophia Dorothea of Brunswig-Lüneberg, though she came to have little need of them. The wife of the Crown Prince of Hanover, she became involved in intrigue and was accused of a liaison with a Swedish nobleman; she saw her marriage annulled, then spent thirty-two years in prison. Her released husband became George I of England; her son, George II; her grandson (through a second Sophia Dorothea), Frederick the Great of Prussia. In the heyday of her beauty and gaiety at the Hanoverian court, Princess Sophia possessed over fifty watches, many of their cases made of a single large stone, such as a lapis lazuli or an onyx.
Early Forms
Because the early watches were in the main large and ugly, handsome cases were designed for them. As each watch was made individually, a painstaking jeweler could create a smaller instrument, such as the bracelet watch. Mme. de Pompadour wore a watch in a gold finger ring, set round with diamonds.
Watches were also made with extra devices. Some, at a time set in advance, would ring an alarm. Some would when pressed chime to reveal the present hour. In all these early watches, accuracy was not the goal. In fact, it was not until about 1680 that most watches were equipped with a minute hand; before that, one pointer marked the passage of the hours.
These watches were worn, by gallant gentlemen, less for checking their business, of which they had little, than for adding to their finery, of which they had much. The time they could spare from the adornment of their persons they devoted to the neglect of their duties. Often indeed there was a watch at each end of the chain, and both might be taken out at the same time, with ostentatious comparing of their accuracy. William Cowper in eighteenth-century England neatly pinned such gallants:
An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
As useless when it goes as when it stands.
And the Earl of Chesterfield, prince of etiquette in his day, admonished his son: “Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one.” Gradually, as businessmen saw the usefulness of the watch in marking time for engagements, the accuracy of the instrument increased, and with that the frequency of its use.