Copy of a cutting from a magazine, name and date unknown:
"Among Dr. Rawlinson's manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, No. 941 contains collection of Miscellaneous Discourses, by Mr. Lewis of Margate, in Kent, whence the following extract has been made:
"'It appears that these hour-glasses were coeval with our Reformation. In a fine frontispiece, prefixed to the Holy Bible of the bishops' translation, printed in 4to. by John Day, 1569, Archbishop Parker is represented in the pulpit with an hour-glass standing on his right hand; ours, here, stood on the left without any frame. It was proper that some time should be prescribed for the length of the sermon, and clocks and watches were not then so common as they are now. This time of an hour continued till the Revolution, as appears by Bishop Sanderson's, Tillotson's, Stillingfleet's, Dr. Barrow's, and others' sermons, printed during that time.'
"The writer of this article was informed in 1811 by the Rev. Mr. Burder, who had the curacy of St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, that the large silver hour-glass formerly used in that church, was melted down into two staff heads for the parish beadles.
"An hour-glass frame of iron, fixed in the wall by the side of the pulpit, was remaining in 1797 in the church of North Moor, in Oxfordshire."
Joseph Rix.
St. Neots, Huntingdonshire.
In many of our old pulpits built during the seventeenth century, when hour sermons were the rule, and thirty minutes the exception, the shelf on which the glass used to stand may still be seen. If I recollect rightly, that of Miles Coverdale was thus furnished, as stated in the newspapers, at the time the church of Bartholomew was removed. Perhaps this emblem was adopted on gravestones as significant of the character of Death as a minister or preacher.
The late Basil Montague, when delivering a course of lectures on "Laughter" at the Islington Institution some few years since, kept time by the aid of this antique instrument. If I remember aright, he turned the glass and said, "Another glass and then," or some equivalent expression.
E. G. Ballard.
There is an example at the church of St. Alban, Wood Street, Cheapside. This church was rebuilt by Sir C. Wren, and finished 1685; showing that the hour-glass was in use subsequent to the times alluded to.
J. D. Allcroft.
I saw on 13th January last, an iron hour-glass stand affixed to a pillar in the north aisle of Belton Church, in the Isle of Axholme.