Watches cannot claim the antiquity of clocks, but they can be traced as far back as the fourteenth century. In shape they were like an egg, and Nuremburg claims their earliest manufacture. Although it is said that they were introduced into England in 1577, yet it is certain that Henry VIII. had a watch, and in 1572 the Earl of Leicester presented to Queen Elizabeth—
—"one amlet or shakell of golde, all over fairly garnished with small diamandes, and fower and one smaller pieces, fully garnished with like diamandes and hanging thereat a round clocke fullie garnished with diamandes and an appendant hanging thereat."
They were so unusual that they were worn ostentatiously round the neck hanging to a chain.
In an old play called "A Mad World, My Masters!", one of the characters says "Ah, by my troth, sir, besides a jewel and a jewel's fellow, a good fair watch that hung about my neck." When Malvolio was telling over the agreeable ways in which he would occupy himself after his marriage with Olivia, he says, "I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch or play with some rich jewel." Watches called "strikers" were known in Ben Jonson's time, for he says in his "Staple of News"
"'T strikes! One, two,
Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch.
Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now stop and rest."
Watches were in use so rarely in the early times of James I. that it was deemed a cause of suspicion when in 1605 one was found upon the person of Guy Vaux. By 1638 they were more common, and in a comedy of that year called "The Antipodes" it is complained that—
"—every clerk can carry
The time of day in his pocket."
The prices of these first time-keepers must have been high, but there are no records of them left. In 1643 the sum of £4 was paid to redeem a watch taken from a nobleman in battle. In 1661 there was advertised as lost—
—"a round watch of reasonable size, showing the day of the month, age of the moon, and tides, upon the upper plate. Thomas Alcock fecit."
The redoubtable Pepys's curiosity extended to watches, and he writes in his diary, December 22, 1665: