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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2012
Since the publication of my letter to your Lordship, on the history and construction of our Astrological Clock, I have been requested to make an addition or two to that paper, in order to its being more fully illustrative of the subject. In the first place, perhaps the mere representation of the figure of the balance which is given in the thirty-third volume of the Archæologia, page 28, does not convey a precise notion of its end and aim, and therefore another diagram, representing it as applied to the escapement, would be more explanatory: secondly, it has been suggested that to many readers not familiar with the forms of the mediæval horloge, a general drawing of our table-clock would be an acceptable illustration: and thirdly, Count Krasinski, of a distinguished Polish family, who investigated the story and times of Sigismund the Great, has further strengthened me with circumstantial evidence respecting Queen Bona, the presumed original possessor of the clock. On these grounds, therefore, I again trespass on your Lordship's time.
page 11 note a In the Mémoirs of the Society of Antiquaries of Picardy (tome x. pl. 3), is a representation of the elaborate Tombeau de F. de Lannoy, on the basement of which appear the four cardinal virtues, the third of which is Temperance holding a clock.
page 17 note a New-year and birth-day presents, a relic of the Roman strenœ, were very unscrupulously exacted in those times, in all the European courts. In my former letter, I mentioned the drawing of a clock by Holbein, which Sir Anthony Denny presented to Henry VIII. as a new-year's gift; and in December, 1756, a large roll was exhibited before this Society, containing a schedule of the moneys, caskets, trinkets, brocades, and rich wearing apparel, which were received by Queen Elizabeth on the 1st of January, 1584 (See Archæologia, vol. i. no. 3). It is printed at length, as are some other similar rolls, in Nichols's Progresses, &c. of Queen Elizabeth. Not only were peers, peeresses, bishops, and officers of state amerced, but the royal retainers—even to the apothecaries and cooks—were expected to make their offerings. On the occasion in question, her Majesty made returns in gilt-plate to the amount of 4809 ounces, exclusive of what she presented to the foreign ambassadors. The new-year's gift she received from the Earl of Leicester in 1571 was a richly-jewelled armlet, having “in the closing thearof a clocke, and in the forepart of the same a faire lozengie dyamond without a foyle, hanging thearat a rounde juell fully garnished with dyamondes and a perle pendaunt.”