There is evidence the two men shared their watches and enjoyed discussing them in an era when the management of time was becoming more regulated and formalised with scientific progress
Grandson of Charles I, nephew of Charles II and son-in-law of James II, William III (1650-1702) was the last Stuart King of England and possibly its most underrated monarch. A fearless military commander who, like his Norman namesake, led a successful invasion of England, William was also a skilled politician, diplomat and collector, with a keen interest in modern science, especially clock-making. Foreign born, William was obliged to rule alongside his wife Mary Stuart, although he wielded all the power: alone, too, following her early death in 1694. His reign (1688-1702) was short but like the revolution he oversaw– in reality, a coup– it really was glorious, with a new and lasting settlement between Crown and Parliament, a flourishing of the arts and sciences and the birth of a golden age for English clock- and watchmaking as witnessed by a remarkable clock watch belonging to the King which is to be sold by Spink in London.
Born in the Dutch Republic in 1650, as the hereditary prince of the noble house of Orange-Nassau William was schooled from birth to achieve his destiny as Stadholder, or sovereign head of state, of the Dutch provinces. Since the death of his Stadtholder father the position had been left vacant, its restoration bitterly opposed by ascendant republican factions. Undaunted, the monarchists around the young prince trained him in the arts of warfare and of kingship, as well as the teaching of Calvinism which appeared to confirm his predestined future as head of state. One of William’s most influential tutors was the poet and composer Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), father of the polymath Constantijn Huygens Jr (1628-1697) and Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), inventor of the pendulum clock. In 1675, Christiaan Huygens made a watch for William, sending it from Paris with advice that it should be carried in a pouch on the prince’s belt and not in his pocket. When it arrived ‘His Highness was evidently happy with it and took pleasure in watching it move’.
When the Dutch Republic faced attack from the English by sea and by the French on land in 1672 the provinces rallied to William, making him Captain-General of the Dutch States Army. Soon after, with the war going badly and the republicans in government discredited (with many murdered), he was further appointed to the restored provincial Stadtholderships, afterwards uniting them as Stadtholder General. With one eye on the English throne and another on breaking the Anglo-French alliance, in 1677 William married his cousin Mary Stuart, eldest daughter of the duke of York, future James II, who, at that time, had no son. When attempts failed to exclude James as a Catholic from succeeding his brother as King, Protestant Mary became heir to the throne. However, when James’ second wife unexpectedly delivered the King of a son in June 1688 (allegedly from a bedpan), William prepared for an invasion of England, encouraged by public opinion and the invitation of several English nobles. On 5th November, William landed in Devon at the head of a large army, compelling James to flee to France, with any hope of recovering his throne subsequently destroyed at the Battle of the Boyne. On 11th April 1690, William and Mary were jointly crowned at Westminster Abbey.
The Watchmaker, from Jan and Caspar Luyken, Spiegel van menselijk bedriff (1694). Alamy.
William travelled to England with Constantijn Huygens Jr as his private secretary. At Court Huygens was known as an expert in watches, regularly visiting the London workshops of Thomas Tompion, Daniel Quare and other clock and watchmakers, and purchasing many timepieces and instruments for himself and for the King. On 16th March 1689, for example, Huygens collected a pocket watch from Tompion that ‘sounded on the hour and quarters’ which he took to show William. There is evidence the two men shared their watches and enjoyed discussing them in an era when the management of time was becoming more regulated and formalised with scientific progress. For William, his clocks and watches were not merely functional tools but objects that conveyed power, organisation and his ability to command the flow of events at Court and on the battlefield. His enthusiasm for horology was matched by a buoyant and expanding market, rapid advances in design and a generation of talented and innovative makers.
Among them was Thomas Herbert, maker of this clock watch, who William had inherited as his Watchmaker and Clockmaker in Extraordinary on ascending to the throne in 1690. Herbert had first been appointed to this prestigious but arduous position in 1676 during the reign of Charles II, and having retained it during the tumultuous reign of James II now served his third monarch. He dwelt ‘over against the Royal Coffee-house near Whitehall’ on a salary of £200 a year paid quarterly (but rarely): ‘in full of all wages, boardwages, bill sand lodgings for looking after and keeping order of all his Majesty’s clocks at Whitehall and elsewhere’. This was an attractive sum, but it paled in comparison to the earnings of successful makers like Thomas Tompion or Daniel Quare – the latter who, when approached, declined the royal post pleading his Quaker principles.
Born in 1651 and apprenticed to Richard Lyons, a future Master of the Clockmaker’s Company, Herbert owed his position at Court to Edward East (1602-1696) whose granddaughter Sarah he had married in 1676. East was a towering figure in the trade, having been Watchmaker to Charles I as well as a founder and long-serving Master of the Clockmakers Company. East had made the silver clock watch hanging in Charles I’s bedchamber which the King had famously handed to a companion as he headed to the scaffold.
The clock watch made by Thomas Herbert may have served a similar purpose for William III: as a timekeeper in his most intimate domestic space. Of monumental proportions, exceptional quality and condition, and beautifully decorated with pierced and engraved flowers so familiar to a Dutch born King, the watch chimes on the hour and quarters. Its shagreened protected back case, emblazoned with the royal cypher, suggests it was intended to travel although it is known that Herbert also received £185 for a ‘large pendulum clock going thirty hours with a chain to be carried with His Majesty in a coach’.
Maintaining the ‘insides’ of the King’s many clocks by different makers was an onerous task
Despite his generous salary and illustrious title, the role of royal watchmaker placed a heavy financial and personal burden on Herbert, and he was never able to develop a thriving commercial workshop like Tompion. Maintaining the ‘insides’ of the King’s many clocks by different makers was an onerous task, whilst he was also obliged to make seven new alarm clocks every three years for the pages of the royal bedchamber with no guarantee of quick payment. In 1699, Herbert was forced to appeal to William Vanburgh, Treasurer of the Chambers Office (and cousin of architect Sir John Vanburgh) for payment of £293 owing to him for the latest batch of watches.
Herbert also became embroiled in an unfortunate dispute with the imperious Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor General of the King’s Works, who believed his office and not Herbert should be responsible for the ‘Great’ or public clocks on the King’s palaces and buildings. By royal warrant, Herbert had made new public clocks for Horse Guards, Kensington Palace, St James’s Palace and the Tower of London but at Hampton Court, where William and Mary had embarked on a massive rebuilding project under Wren’s direction, he had only restored the celebrated 16th century Astronomical clock to an order of the Office of Works. Wren, who blatantly favoured Tompion, seized upon this as precedent that all clocks on royal buildings were part of the edifice’ and should be his responsibility and not the royal watchmaker’s. The Lord Chamberlain eventually ruled in Herbert’s favour, but challenging Wren’s authority must have damaged the watchmaker’s reputation in the close-knit world of the Court. Although he would go on to serve Queen Anne following William’s death in 1702, Herbert, a genius of his craft, would die bankrupt and largely forgotten.
His troubled career means Herbert’s work is now exceptionally rare with no apparent examples in the British Museum, Royal Collection or V&A Museum and today his name is overshadowed by his illustrious watchmaking peers. Likewise, compared to his Carolean predecessors with their avid collecting habits, personal belongings of the more modest William III are extremely scarce. Last exhibited in London in 1971, the re-discovery of this beautiful and imposing clock watch is therefore a landmark event which sheds light on the hidden private world of England’s most intriguing King.
For further sale details about this magnificent clock please contact Tim Robson, [email protected], 020 563 4007.
