Figure 94. TALL-CASE CLOCKS. English.
DANIEL QUARE, maker. 1690. J. HARRISON, maker. 1715.
In an inventory of the property of William Bennett, East Greenwich, Rhode Island, who died in 1753, among other articles were mentioned "warming-pan, pewter, sun-dial, book, debts, £10."
After the dial came the clepsydra, a sort of clock, which measured time by the graduated flow of some liquid, like water, through a small aperture. While the hour-glass was not known in England till 886, it had been used in Rome long before; but inventions traveled slowly in those days. The hour-glass remained long in use, even after the invention of clocks, and while we know it chiefly as marking the period of agony of some unwilling victim at the piano, it was used even later than the noon mark on the window-ledge, which may be seen to-day on some of the old houses still standing.
A writer in the "Gentlemen's Magazine" for 1746 says that he was present on an occasion when a grave-digger was at work in Clerkenwell Fields.
"He had dug pretty deep, and was come to a coffin which had lain so long that it was quite rotten, and the plate so eaten with rust that he could not read anything of the inscription. In clearing away the old wood the grave-digger found an hour-glass close to the left side of the skull, with sand still in it. Being a lover of antiquity, I bought it of him, and have since learned from some antiquarians that it was an ancient custom to put an hour-glass in the coffin to show that the sands of life were run."
The origin of clockwork is involved in great obscurity, though there are statements by many writers that clocks were in use as early as the ninth century.
By 1288 a clock was placed in the Old Palace Yard, London, and remained there till the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In 1292 a clock was placed on Canterbury Cathedral, and in 1368 a striking clock was erected at Westminster. By 1500, clocks were used in private houses, and watches were introduced. In 1368 three Dutch clockmakers were invited to come to England to teach the business to native workers, though "Dutch clocks" and their makers were held in contempt some years later.
There was a clock put into the tower of Hampton Court Palace in 1540 by a maker whose initials were "N. O.", all that posterity knows of him. It was the oldest clock in England that kept fairly good time. In 1575 George Gaver, "serjeant painter" as his title runs, had a sum of money allowed him for "painting the great dial at Hampton Court Palace, containing hours of day and night, and the course of sun and moon." In 1649 a striking part was added. By 1711 it was found that the clock had not been running as correctly as it should, owing to the fact that some careless or ignorant workman had removed some important parts of the works. After this discovery it was left neglected for many years, and finally lost its hands. It was in this condition in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when G. P. R. James wrote a poem entitled "Old Clock Without Hands at Hampton Court."