Clocktime Queen Elizabeth I

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Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She certainly had a fascination for clocks and watches. At the time, watches in particular were worn as expensive jewellery, usually on a chain around the waist or neck. Documents even state that she would not get out of bed in the morning until her royal astrologer had told her fortune. Perhaps she may have used made-to-order timepieces such as the complicated Astrological Table Clock, made around 1600 by Nicholas Vallin, to facilitate these readings. She also understood and made use of the symbolic value of gifting timepieces as a tool of diplomacy. Early in her reign, Elizabeth appointed Nicholas Oursian as Royal Clockmaker. He was followed by Bartholomew Newsam (sometimes recorded as ‘Newsom’), who was appointed Royal Clock Keeper and Clockmaker. Newsam may have been English. One source cites his birthplace as Middlesex, another cites it as York. If Newsam was indeed English, he, instead of Robert Harvey, would be the earliest known clockmaker to have been born and bred in England.[1] A square vertical table clock, made by Newsom around 1575, survives and is at the British Museum (Museum No. 1888,1201.126). After the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, Elizabeth, a staunch Protestant, especially welcomed skilled Huguenot craftsmen such as clockmakers John and Nicholas Vallin who had immigrated to England during her reign. It was also in 1572 that Robert Dudley presented his queen with the gift of a tiny clock set in a bracelet, which is argued to be the first wrist watch. In her article ‘Gifts of imperfection: Elizabeth I and the politics of timepieces’, Miranda Wilson argues that Dudley and those associated with him used the occasion of the New Year’s Day Gift Rolls to give the queen various types of timepieces rather than any other type of present.[2] On 31 July 1591, Elizabeth I appointed Randolph Bull as her last clockmaker, providing him with a salary for life of 12d (5p) per day, with annual livery money of £3 6s 8p per annum. Public records and other surviving documents, including Thomas Dallam’s Diary of his travels (Bent 1892), provide examples of Elizabeth using the gifting of elaborate timepieces as a diplomatic tool. In the articles ‘An organ’s metamorphosis: Thomas Dallam’s sonic transformations in the Ottoman Empire’ by Laura Jennifer Wood and ‘The Sultan’s organ: presents and self-presentation in Thomas Dallam's “Diary”’ by Laurence Danson, the Queen’s use of clocks in her cultivation of a fruitful relationship with the Ottoman Empire is investigated.[3] In particular, Danson explains that Elizabeth (and any other Renaissance ruler who wanted access to Eastern trade routes) understood that ‘presents and presentations were fundamental, long continued structural features of the relationship between the Sultan and his own subjects and the Europeans who sought his mercantile favour’.[4] The Queen, in concert with the Levant Company, worked tirelessly to open up and capitalise on trade between the Islamic East and the Protestant West following the Company’s establishment in 1583. This could not happen without the favour of the powerful Ottoman, Sultan Muhammad III (known in England as the ‘Grand Turk’). The Sultan received his first clock from Elizabeth as part of a cache of gifts presented to him by Elizabeth’s ambassador William Harborne, who describes the clock in a letter thus:

over it was a forrest of trees of silver, among the which were deere chased with dogs, and men on horseback following, men drawing of water, others carrying mine oare on barrowes: on the toppe of the clocke stood a castle, and on the castle a mill. All these were of silver. And the clocke was round beset with jewels.[5]

And again, in 1598–1599, Elizabeth commissioned and gifted another clock to the Sultan: a magnificent organ clock designed to surpass the clock presented by Hareborne. Apparently, the Sultan did not deal in credit; his goodwill was doled out parsimoniously, and he required a new gift for every favour the English sought.[6] Thomas Dallam was royally commissioned to create the Sultan’s gift. He was known as one of the finest organ builders of the day and had created organs for some of the Oxford colleges. Although Dallam had been apprenticed through the Blacksmiths’ Company in London and may have had some knowledge of clockmaking in addition to organ building, he recruited ‘my mate Harvie, who was the engineer’ to design and build the clockwork. The ‘engineer’ was probably the Oxford-based clockmaker John Harvey.[7] Dallam and Harvey’s organ clock was a highly complex, automated mechanical marvel, standing at 16 feet. It cost no less than £550 and contained 300 ounces of silver. The clock face in its centre was surrounded by an organ, the keyboard of which sat below the dial, and the organ pipes on either side of it. A trumpeter figure also stood at either side of the dial. All this was surmounted by a bejewelled figure of Elizabeth replete with 45 diamonds, emeralds and rubies opulently placed around her. And above the figure of the Queen was a holly bush filled with blackbirds and thrushes, which were automated to sing and flutter their wings. The clock had a duration of up to six hours and struck the hour from one to 24. A tune was chimed on its 16 bells. When the tune ended, the automated trumpeters would blow a fanfare on their silver trumpets. The organ was designed to play by itself, as if by magic. It could also be played manually.[8] Elizabeth’s motives for presenting the organ clock to Sultan Muhammad were two-fold.[9] First, it encouraged the Sultan to recognise the new English ambassador at the Ottoman court – something he had so far refused to do. It worked, as the English ambassador was recognised when the Queen’s courtly gift was received. Second, it functioned as ‘a necessary element in a complex set of diplomatic protocols that enabled the English Levant Company to maintain a commercial relationship with the Ottoman Empire’.[10] It took Dallam and Harvey around two years to make the organ clock, deliver it to the Sultan, and return to England, thus completing their grand adventure on behalf of their queen. The entire story of this royal commission is recorded in the Public Records Office and in ‘Dallam’s Diary’.[11] Visiting clockmakers from France and Switzerland reported that the Grand Turk’s organ clock was still functioning perfectly even after many years. Since then, the whereabouts of Elizabeth’s lavish gift have been lost in time. The year 1603 marked the end of an era. On 24 March of that year, Queen Elizabeth I died, thus bringing an end to the House of Tudor. After her death, on 27 June 1603, her last Royal Clockmaker, Randolph Bull, offered to surrender his office. Shortly after Elizabeth’s passing, King James VI of Scotland acceded to the English throne. On 25 July 1603, he was crowned in London as James I of England. Like Elizabeth, he understood the importance of timepieces and promptly summoned from Paris the talented Scottish watchmaker David Ramsay. James appointed Ramsay (a foreigner) to his exclusive inner council, making him Page to the Royal Bedchamber and giving him responsibility for the royal collection of clocks and watches. End Notes [1] Britten 1986; Loomes 2014, 248; Thompson 2004. [2] Wilson 2020. [3] Wood 2015; Danson 2009. [4] Danson 2009, 640. [5] From ‘William Hareborne’s Ambassage’, dated 1585. See Danson 2009, 645, ns. 13 and 14; Hakluyt 2014, 257. [6] Danson 2009, especially 645–646. [7] Bent 1892. It is most likely that the ‘Harvey’ who assisted Dallam was indeed John Harvey. John Harvey’s placement in Oxford during his early life goes towards explaining his connection to Dallam, as argued by horologist Dr John C. Taylor OBE. It should be noted that that horologist Brian Loomes (2013) argues instead that it was Robert Harvey (the son of John Harvey) who most likely assisted and travelled with Dallam. To complicate matters further, Danson (2009, 647 and 650) cites two other Harveys identified by Dallam in his Diary: his ‘mate’ Michael Harvey and ‘the joiner William Harvey’, who went ashore with Dallam on Rhodes and toured the walls. [8] Dallam's 'Account of an Organ Carryed to the Grand Seignor Curious Matter ‘ is known as Dallam’s Diary’ (Bent 1892; Danson 2009, 639). For a transcription of some of Dallam’s description of the clock, as well as additional details of its features, see Loomes (2013). [9] Wood 2015, 81. [10] Also see Loomes 2013 for this argument. [11] Bent 1892. References

Bent, T. (editor). 1892. Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant: I. The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam, 1599–1600. II. Extracts from the Diaries of Dr. John Covel, 1670–1679. With Some Account of the Levant Company of Turkey Merchants (Issue 87 of Works issued by the Hakluyt Society). New York, NY: B. Franklin.
Britten, F. J. 1986. Britten’s Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers: A history of styles in clocks and watches and their mechanisms (ninth edition). London: Bloomsbury Books.
Danson, L. 2009. ‘The Sultan’s organ: Presents and self-presentation in Thomas Dallam's “Diary”’ in Renaissance Studies 23(5): 639–658.
Hakluyt, R. November 2014. ‘The letter of M. William Hareborne her Magesties Ambassadour to Bassa Romadan the Beglerbeg of Tripolis in Barbary, for the restoring of the sayd ship called The Jesus, Anno 1585’ in Hakluyt, R. (editor). The Principal Navigations, Voyages. Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (Volume 5). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 316–319.
Loomes, B. 2013. ‘Collecting antique clocks: Robert Harvey, maker of the first lantern clocks in Britain'. https://www.brianloomes.com/collecting/harvey/
Loomes, B. 2014. Clockmakers of Britain: 1286–1700. Mayfield, Ashbourne: Mayfield Books.
Thompson, D. 2004. Clocks. London: British Museum Press.
Wilson, M. 2020. ‘Gifts of imperfection: Elizabeth I and the politics of timepieces’ in Explorations in Renaissance Culture 46(1): 44–56.
Wood, J. L. 2015. ‘An organ’s metamorphosis: Thomas Dallam’s sonic transformations in the Ottoman Empire’ in Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 4: 81–105.