At St. Ives a bell bears a pithy inscription as follows:—
“Arise, and go about your business.”
The bells of Bow are amongst the best known in England, and figure in the legendary lore as well as in the business life of London. Every reader is familiar with the story of Dick Whittington leaving the city in despair, resting on Highgate Hill, and hearing the famous bells, which seemed to say in their merry peals—
“Turn again, Whittington,
Thou worthy citizen,
Lord Mayor of London.”
In 1469, an order was given by the Court of the Common Council for Bow bell to be rung every night at nine o’clock. Nine was the recognised time for tradesmen to close their shops. The clerk, whose duty it was to ring the bell, was irregular in his habits, and the late performance of his duties disappointed the toiling apprentices, who thus addressed him:—
“Clerk of Bow bell,
With thy yellow locks,
For thy late ringing
Thy head shall have knocks.”
The clerk replied:—
“Children of Cheape,
Hold you all still,
For you shall hear Bow Bell
Ring at your will.”
The foregoing rhymes take us back to a period before clocks were in general use in this country. The parentage of the present clock cannot be traced with any degree of certainty. We learn that as early as 996, Gerbert, a distinguished Benedictine monk (subsequently Pope Sylvester II.), constructed for Magdeburg a clock, with a weight as a motive power. Clocks with weights were used in monasteries in Europe in the eleventh century. It is supposed that they had not dials to indicate the time, but at certain intervals struck a bell to make known the time for prayers.
From the fact that a clock-keeper was employed at St. Paul’s, London, in 1286, it is presumed that there must have been a clock, but we have not been able to discover any details respecting it. There was a clock at Westminster in 1290, and two years later £30 was paid for a large clock put up at Canterbury Cathedral. Thirty pounds represented a large sum of money in the year 1292. About 1326 an astronomical clock was erected at St. Albans. It was the work of Richard de Wallingford, a blacksmith’s son of the town, who rose to the position of Abbot there. In the earlier half of the fourteenth century are traces of numerous other clocks in England. According to Haydn’s “Dictionary of Dates,” in the year 1530 the first portable clock was made. This statement does not agree with a writer in “Chambers’s Encyclopædia” (edition 1890). “The date,” we are told in that work, “when portable clocks were first made, cannot be determined. They are mentioned in the beginning of the fourteenth century. The motive power must have been a mainspring instead of a weight. The Society of Antiquaries of England possess one, with the inscription in Bohemian that it was made at Prague, by Jacob Zech, in 1525. It has a spring for motive power, with fusee, and is one of the oldest portable clocks in a perfect state in England.”