Foreign worker In the context of the 17th century London clockmaking market and its guild the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, a ‘foreign worker’ was any worker who was from outside the city. Thus, in the eyes of the Company, Hugeuenot workers, such as James Vautrollier and Isaac Pluvier, and even the Company's first Master, the Scottish clock and watchmaker David Ramsay (who was also the Chief Clockmaker to King James I and VI and a royal agent of his son and successor King Charles I), were ‘foreigners’. Clockmaker Ahasuerus Fromanteel found himself constantly in the crosshairs of the disciplinary court of Clockmakers’ Company, as he routinely flouted regulation by employing Huguenots workers in his Southwark workshop in London. Clockmaker Joseph Knibb also ran into problems with the city of Oxford for similar reasons. Shortly after he moved there, he began signing his clocks ‘of Oxford’. This was controversial, as his fellow Oxonian clockmakers considered him a ‘foreigner’ because he was not from Oxford. They consequently launched a petition against him.
