Samuel Pepys, who recorded everything that was going on in London, in July 28th, 1660, has this entry.
"To Westminster, and there met Mr. Henson, who had formerly had the brave clock that went with bullets, (which is now taken away from him by the King, it being his goods)."
In the "Gentlemen's Magazine" for 1785 is the following comment on this statement of Pepys.
"Some clocks are still made with a small ball, or bullet on an inclined plane, which turns every minute."
The King's clocks probably dropped bullets. Gainsborough, the painter, had a brother who was a dissenting minister at Henley-on-Thames and possessed a strong genius for mechanics. He invented a clock of very peculiar construction, which after his death was deposited in the British Museum. It told the hour by a little bell, and was kept in motion by a leaden bullet which dropped, from a spiral reservoir at the top of the clock, into a little ivory bucket. This was so contrived as to discharge it at the bottom, and by means of a counterweight was carried up to the top of the clock, where it received another bullet, which was discharged as the former. This seems to have been an attempt at perpetual motion.
Catherine of Braganza was responsible for introducing many luxuries to the English world. Pepys makes this mention of her clock in 1664.
"Mr. Pierce showed me the Queen's [the Portuguese Princess, wife of Charles II] bed-chamber ... and her holy water at her head as she sleeps, with a clock by her bedside, wherein a lamp burns that tells her the time of the night at any time."
Pepys speaks again in 1667 of going to see--
--"a piece of clocke-worke made by an Englishman--indeed very good, wherein all the several states of man's age to one hundred years old, is shown very pretty and solemne."
Besides the dolphin fret shown on the Tompion clock in Figure 95 there were other patterns, perhaps the earliest being what is called the "heraldic fret", which was a coat-of-arms with scroll-work on either side. This was not used after 1650, so any clocks bearing this pattern belong to the first half of the seventeenth century. It was early seen that to be accurate a clock must have some contrivance to keep it going while it is being wound. In the old-fashioned house clocks which were wound by merely pulling a string, and in which one such winding served both for the going and striking parts, this was done by using what was called the endless chain of Huyghens, which consists of a chain or string with ends joined together, passing over two pulleys which are placed on the arbors of the great wheels, and which have both spikes and deep grooves in them to prevent the chain from slipping off.