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CLOCKS 
bell. The dial, brass or of white metal, is well engraved; min- 
utes are not indicated, but the hours are divided into quarters ; 
they had but one - the hour - hand. The original works went but 
a little over twenty-four hours, and a single weight, regulated by 
a long pendulum, supplied the power. They stood on brackets, 
with a slit for the pendulum and two holes for the weight-chain. 
On the dial the name and locality of the maker were nearly 
always engraved, and often the date. I have one made by Rich. 
Rayment, Bury St. Edmunds, date not given. The tone of the 
bells is extremely beautiful, especially when softened by a pad of 
buff-leather on the hammer. The earliest of these clocks that I 
have seen was dated 1539, the latest i686. I should be glad of 
information respecting others, - name, locality, and date." 
To this communication Mr. Octavius Morgan re- 
sponded in "Notes and Queries," sixth series, vol. vii. 
p. 371, and, besides many other very valuable and 
interesting facts, gave the following history of these 
clocks: - 
"The domestic clocks divide themselves into two classes, 
those which go by weights, and those of which the motive power 
is a coiled spring, which was not applied till about 15oo ; and 
these spring clocks form the class of chamber and table clocks. 
The weight clocks, which the dealers are apt to call fifteenth 
century clocks, are, in fact, the work of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries - at least, I have never heard of one earlier. 
The description of these clocks has been given so accurately in 
' N. & Q.,' 6th S. vii. 165, by Mr. Salter, that it is useless to 
repeat it.  But there is something remarkable about them. 
They are peculiarly English; they are all made of brass, and 
precisely similar in form and design; and they seem to have 
been cast upon the world suddenly and early in the sixteenth