A Royal 'HAAGSE KLOK'
by: Keith Piggott.

PERSPECTIVES & HYPOTHESES.    Back to Main Document

Coster partisans must now explain, or better, find and put their evidence on the table for an open scholarly debate.

Derivatives. 
Oosterwijck’s concealed watch-stop work is quite unique. Being hidden, beneath an outer barrel-cap, strike-wheel and ratchet might denote it as a ‘secreet’ construction, alluded to in the 1657 Contract. Fromanteel’s and Bartram’s seem to be related, which is the derivative? The late 1657 Coster-Fromanteel ‘D1’, zealously guarded by Museum Boerhaave, has far simpler and visible stop work. Did Severijn share the guarded secret? Would Coster (or Visbagh) partisans argue that this clock was sold to Oosterwijck, to then re-badge for a King? Unthinkable! “One Swallow does not a summer make”, nevertheless, I have informed Berry van Lieshout also Dr Plomp of my discovery. The absence of any extant English split-barrels is puzzling, but may be explicable; as I now propose,  at (e) hereunder.

Whose Secret?
Impartial scholars know the available evidence is incapable of any absolute proofs, but the plethora of Dutch split-barrels and the dearth of English ones, in itself only circumstantial, is rather telling. Case closed? "Not quite".

Coster was an able clockmaker, so he could well, independently, have invented a split-going-barrel, as Plomp suggests. His renaissance apprenticeship may  have given him access to the German split-striking-barrel of Burgi, and he could have adapted it to drive his going train, now regulated by the great Galilei’s panacea pendulum corrected by Huygens' new cheeks. I do give Coster credit for his evident skills in this most secretive of crafts; but where does he demonstrate any knowledge of Jost Burgi’s inventions? I reiterate;

Impartial readers will realise that this case is not closed. All fair-minded parties must, at least, engage in new studies of all the available evidence. To the many Coster partisans, I do recommend the Open Research project (see Appendix Three) which should unearth all the tangible facts for a new evidential base - then to objectively determine both their evolution and chronology.

● 5. Personal Associations? 
Huygens’ correspondence, “Oeuvres Completes de Christiaan Huygens” (edited by Nijhoff and Vollgraff), reveals his personal associations with Severijn Oosterwijck, Alexander Bruce (Earl of Kinkardine) and Sir Robert Moray. The latter was an intimate of the exiled Charles Stuart, benefactor to the present owners’ knighted ancestor. The family genealogy indeed shows a continuity of descent, so I leave it to them to trawl the family archives and Wills, in which I have seen mentioned this Royal clock, to document its provenance from their Royal patron, by His gift to a new English Knight for services rendered in those uncertain and dangerous times. Much hangs on that historic association.  It links us directly to that time.

Fig. 35
King Charles the Second of England (1630–1685)

Nevertheless, there is good reason to accept that the future King Charles the Second of England had already had access to the patrician Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens - not least by their own fathers’ personal contacts, thus to Oosterwijck. Then, the pendulum clock was the most sought after personal acquisition of its day. Surely a King-in-Waiting could have one, one made by Severijn Oosterwijck, recommended by Moray or Huygens, and upon His accession in June 1660, the new King might well award this valuable gift to His loyal supporter (name withheld).

● 6. A Seconds’ Hiatus?
Before 1596 Tycho Brahe’s several astronomical clocks, by Jost Burgi, showed Seconds’. Yet Hague clocks, purportedly ‘invented’ by another astronomer, sixty years later, rarely showed Seconds’.

Clocks without Seconds’ would hold no interest for astronomer Christiaan Huygens; but Seconds’ then had no popular application. And Hague clocks were expensive, too, from fl.80 to fl.120, excluding spring-strikers. I suggest Dutch burghers then would regard any extra charge for Seconds' as being ‘a florin too far’.


What relevance has that, or my red-herring dial sector (above), to Oosterwijck’s, or any, Hague clock? In my 2005 paper, (Op.Cit.), I suggest Huygens, in Horologium (1658), disingenuously revealed• his complex 'OP' Interim design, that beat half-seconds, and displayed Seconds from the centre, rather than reveal his simpler horizontal-verge, that he and Coster saw as their real money spinner. When Huygens did finally publish his 1657 original design, it not only beat Seconds' but showed Seconds on a disc in a dial sector. (Horologium Oscillatorium, Part I, Figs. I-IV).


* Was Huygens' paranoid, like the great Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)? He too used misleading  plans; to keep secret his great dome's ingenious double-skinned spirally-braced construction. Both deserved their glory, both feared plagiarism.

Seeing all the contemporary evidence, why did typical Hague spring-clocks omit seconds, and where are all Coster’s pre-Contract pendulums with Seconds’, as Huygens published, and Treffler made? [Dr.Plomp has always separated the domestic by-product he named "Hague clock", from any scientific purposes; see "Pendulums", Op. Cit., p.11, Chapt.1, The beginning]. It seems Pendulums made for scientific purposes have been ignored.

Other than his June 16^th 1657 Patent model, Coster’s earliest dateable Hague clock is probably the timepiece Senor Burratinij sent to Grand Duke Ferdinand de Medici on September 25^th 1657, (Plomp R, “Pendulums”, Op.Cit. pp.15,16). Probably that clock was Coster’s own work, but, being already three weeks after his Contract, John Fromanteel could well have made it. Coster’s Medici clock is described in a 1690 inventory, it has a short pendulum, in an ebony case with a ”wavy cornice”, like Dutch art frames -an exception to Dr.Plomp’s characteristic 'P2’. Using Plomp's ‘chronology’, I name it ‘DØ’.


Treffler’s ‘Copy’.
The whereabouts of Coster ‘DØ’ is not known. Fortunately, in 1657, the Grand Duke ordered his clockmaker Johan Philipp Treffler of Augsburg to make a ‘copy’, and that movement survives; but its case was destroyed in Florence’s 1966 flood. (Inventory 3557, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence). I name Treffler’s movement, ‘DØ copy’.

Treffler’s movement has a short pendulum suspended in cheeks, like all Costers, but it shows ‘seconds’! (Plomp R, “Pendulums”, Op.Cit. p.16, Figs.9,10, 11). Leaving aside Treffler’s claim to priority for the pendulum, I reason he probably followed Coster’s short-pendulum train, even if he did add the Augsburg fusee. It  would seems ‘DØ’ was a spring clock, Huygens’ timepiece ‘DØ1W’ was not.

Huygens' "Description of the Pendulum Clock" DØ1W; weight driven timepiece having four baluster pillars, a 3-foot compound pendulum, slung on a little suspension pulley, and having a Seconds' disc in a dial sector. None are known; Thuret's regulators are its nearest representations.

Yet Huygens’ 1659 letter to Paris, omits any mention of Seconds’ clocks from his price-list, (see Plomp R, “Pendulums”, Op. Cit. pp.32-33). He mentions duration, striking, weight also spring driven, but not his own invention’s very raison d’etre! Nevertheless, Huygens did promote his Seconds’ regulators, on weights, to other scientists. Licensed models were made by several makers, including Ahasuerus Fromanteel for Dr.Ward in 1661/2. Clearly, Huygens’ price-list only reflected the popular dictates, little wonder then that neither his Seconds' indicating Patent clock (DØ1W) nor his OP-gear clock (DØ2W) are thought to have survived.

Although first published in 1673, this represents Huygens' June 1657 Patent Application. Note, pre-cycloid cheeks, box case with no windows, suspension pulley to pendulum, all are found in Oosterwijck's Royal 'Haagseklok'. Both Huygens' Dutch top potence and round pillars are pre-Contract designs - let us say Dutch in their concept and probably in their execution.

The same parochial isolation cannot be said of his clock published in Horologium is September 1658, this was designed while John Fromanteel worked for Salomon Coster; English ideas arrived.

Huygens now depicts a strap-form in upper potence, like the Fromanteels and like Oosterwijck's subject clock. He  also now reveals the construction of his endless-rope maintaining power.

So it seems today we only know the popular form of Coster’s 1657 Patent; a mass market spring-clock without Seconds’; whereas Treffler’s four-wheel train probably mimics the astronomer’s own, albeit in a spring clock. If true, then this relic 'DØ copy' represents Huygens’ arrangement known only from his 1657 drawing, first published in Horologium Oscillatorium, and from Isaac Thuret’s extant regulators in the Boerhaave and Vehmeyer collections.

Tragically, Florence's disastrous floods in 1966, destroyed Treffler's ornate Augsburg Tabernacle case, damaging his rare movement. Dr Plomp. showed the Tabernacle case (Op.Cit. "Pendulums" Fig.10, p.16). A comparable Augsburg case, c.1625, was in the P.C.Spaans' Collection (Christie's, Op.Cit., Lot 420). <Refer_Tabernacle>

The large gilt-brass dial was fixed onto the front door, retained by two straps. It has a delicate seconds ring, yet its broad pewter chapter ring and ornate case appear to be anachronisms but follow the contemporary German also Italian practices. The back plate is fully signed, 'Gio: Filippa Trefler Augosto'.


New images show a decorative bridge with one surviving Huygens' cheek; a back-wound fusee-arbor, having the motion-wheel on the front plate above the ratchet to the spring barrel; the spidery bars fix the movement onto the door frame to secure the dial plate.
Seen here  is a brass dust cover to the plates, age unstated. In due course, I will return to Treffler's clock,

Treffler’s ‘DØ copy’ now assumes huge significance to establish the train and the escapement of Coster’s ‘DØ’. Nicolas Hanet took several of Salomon Coster's seconds’ clocks to Paris between 1658-1660, we do not know if these were spring or weight driven, might these have mimicked Coster ‘DØ’, or  Huygens 'DØ1W?

Here I cite basic details. Treffler’s copy mimics Coster’s escapement and pendulum, but his plates are longer (190 by 90 mm), for the fusee – which forces Coster’s pinioned-centre wheel to the front. The ratchet is on the front plate, like Coster. The four plain round pillars, (35mm long), pinned at the back plate, being richly decorated and signed, “Gio: Filippa Trefler Augosto”.

Questions of construction and originality will only be answered by examination, I have invited Florence’s Museum of the History of Science to review their newly significant relic - probably the oldest original pendulum movement extant. I hope eventually to add its wheel train to the 'open-research' matrix with contemporary pendulum trains, (Appendix Three).

Later Seconds’ Clocks.
Huygens professed his ablest clockmaker to be Johannes van Ceulen (1656-1715). He provides the exceptions to this hiatus.

From 1675 he too made observatory regulators with pendulums beating Two-Seconds' (matching Tompion); he also made rare Hague long-cases, month going and striking, showing Seconds’ with a monumental Dutch 'anchor' escapement, and having other idiosyncratic features; elaborate cocks, winding squares on sleeves pinned over round arbors, also strike set-off at the dial plate (see view, at II side).

fig. 36
A seconds ring on a late 17th c. clock by Joh. van Ceulen.

*Original meaning, "the [anchor] Escapement having Dominion over the Weight, (John Smith, 1675).

[It has been suggested that its untypical circular dial plate was originally square, one former owner had even fitted a mask to square it up for his replica case. But constructional features in the movement suggest it was made circa 1685-1690, when the French had already broken with formal rules and had introduced circular dial plates in spring-clocks and long-cases. (see Tardy, "La Pendule Francaise", 1949,  Vol.1, Louis XIV, p.97, 'Tete de Poupee' by Pierre Du Chesne, also p.107, 'Regulateur de Parquet)]. On his return from Paris, Huygens too designed several circular dials].

Van Ceulen also introduced Joseph Knibb’s silent pull-quarter repeat into Hague clocks, with his Marot console clock (above). Quarter strike is rarely seen, but one unsigned early Hague clock proves that third trains were also made, (DNFA, 09/09/09, Lot.87). Van Ceulen's workshop also made repeating movements for other makers, domestic and foreign; "Jacques Benoit a Cleve", apparently signed by the workshop's engraver.

His large month spring-clock (below) originally showed Second's having a seconds' pendulum extending through the base plate. For a Hague clock it has the rare feature of a split-back plate; also rare twin fusees like his Kassel astronomical clock; and remarkably it is housed in a superb French case of ebony with unusual and excellent ormolu mounts; the rear is door inlaid with an ivory Coronet and Star badge; circa 1690. It has an ornate silver-mounted folding-key for both doors, (Plomp's characteristic P6).

These Paris made cases, typically, house movements by Thuret, Martinot, Gaudron, or Gribelin. This is yet another of Johannes van Ceulen's Franco-Dutch collaborations, at the highest level. Probably it stood on a pedestal, as a ‘Regulateur de Parquet'  for a noble French family. At that time Seconds' were de rigueur, also in England too, the Fromanteel brothers had just opened shop in Amsterdam; the longcase had arrived in Holland.

fig. 37
Joh. van Ceulen.

[Now altered to short pendulum; both the dial-regulation and seconds’ ring have been removed; and the bells relocated to the interior, (see Christie’s London, 22-3-1989, Lot. 21)].

The back plates of the three Van Ceulen clocks shown are all signed 'Hagae Hollandiae', thought to signify 'made for export'.

Not until 1700 do we see Pierre (Pieter) van Stryp (Strijp) in Rome, making a spring clock utilising Treffler's fusee, having a half-second pendulum on a 'tic-tac' escapement, to indicate Seconds' on the integral Chapter ring.

This imposing Seconds' indicating spring-clock also has quarter strike and alarum, in an English inspired case and dial having day-date. (Sotheby's London, Clocks, lot.38, 28th January 1977).  STRIJP (Stryp) was then a small village now absorbed by Eindhoven. The family names of Pieter in Rome also Bernard in Antwerp probably derive from there. For this information and original image I thank Mr.P.Th.R.Mestrom Ph.D, author "Uurwerken en uurwerkmakers in Limburg 1367-1850".

Of course, even before Johannes Van Ceulen (1675), English clocks were in the ascendant and surpassed all Europe; by 1680 English makers had even relocated to Holland, (Joseph Norris, Fromanteel brothers, Steven Tracy), or had set up supply chains or trading links. (John Drury with Fromanteel, Clarke & Dunster as Hans Kreft showed in "Rediscovering the Fromanteel Story", Horological Foundation, 2005).


Oosterwijck’s Options.
Returning to the subject Royal spring-clock, it now appears that Oosterwijck, all along, had had the means to describe ‘Seconds’; and yet, and like all of Coster’s many acolytes, he chose not to put seconds into a spring wall-clock having a short-pendulum. Evidently, that had other implications.

From 1661, Bruce, then Huygens, had gimbals or suspended short-pendulum sea-clocks showing the Seconds’, because that application probably required it. (Robertson D., Op.Cit. Chap.IX, Figs.23-24, pp.143-174; also Leopold, J.H, "The Longitude Timekeepers of Christiaan Huygens", as edited by William Andrews, "In Quest of Longitude", pp.102-114, Harvard 1998). Anthony Weston describes the surviving wedge-shaped movement, signed Severijn Oosterwijck, probably made in 1662, copying Bruce's original 1660-1661 London model. The wedge movement incorporates a fusee, and an engraved  back plate dial, revolving once in 4-minutes*. (Weston, A., "A Reassessment of the Clocks of John Hilderson", Antiquarian Horology, Vol.25, No.4, pp.431-432).

*Four minutes represents one degree of longitude in solar transits; 24hrs/360 deg = 4 minutes. But its four-minute dial has perplexed every authority.  I determined to resolve it and involved a colleague from my first squadron noted for his didactic mind, world pilot and solo-mariner Brian Walton. He put his mind to my interrogations. He pointed out that the Babylonians divided their 24 unequal hours by 360 to arrive at the "Ush" (4 minutes) as a unit to calculate eclipses. He also points out that four minutes has a special significance in sidereal time, for star transits; 4-minutes sidereal is the difference between the sidereal day and mean day; whereas 3min.59secs. is the difference measured in mean time, requiring conversions from periodic solar observations. Brian suggests, therefore, the longitude clock might be rated to sidereal time, using star sighting, so eliminating the need for solar equation tables. The clock would be rated on land, determine longitudes to chart landfalls, and be used at sea as a Longitude clock without need for periodic solar equation tables. Oosterwijck's four-minute dial is resolved, it is typically simple, and it is very ingenious.

[Note. Assuming that that was the case, one wonders why Huygens persisted with equation tables, unless solely for rating terrestrial regulators. He went on, ultimately, to invent an automatic equation kidney cam in 1694/5, as notified to Tompion and Quare via his brother the King's secretary in London in 1695, who, upon Huygens' untimely death that same year, each incorporated his kidney cam in very different ways to claim "inventions" in their own names. In this I follow Alan H Lloyd, and I remarked to organizers of "Huygens' Legacy" on the absence in the catalogue, for the  Quare/Williamson equation clock (exhibit 90), of any recognition of Huygens' part for the equation kidney-cam. Strangely, they would credit England].

Further, its origins are in London! Might Robert Hook or Christopher Wren have been involved with whom ever had made Bruce's original Longitude clock? And had Huygens anything to say, about sidereal rating of his own Longitude clocks? If he did, I do not recall it.

John Hilderson is said to have copied one of the damaged Oosterwijck sea clocks. Was Bruce's original Longitude clock made by Fromanteel, who wisely retained the fusee for such an exacting purpose and its unstable environment - as Hooke then realised?  If not, then by whom? Not Davis Mell, whose earlier pivoted-pendulum clock, made to the highest standards of the time, I now attribute to Ahasuerus Fromanteel himself.

The origin and maker of Bruce's first Longitude clock is of much greater import than has previously been realised. Bruce may have been inspired by the new pendulums when he visited the Hague in 1660 to escort Charles II to London. But he was in England from June 1660 to March 1662, so who there made his crutch and pendulum? William Dereham (1696) has all the pendulums made in England before the Royal Society's clock (1662) as being Dutch or made here to Huygens' design. Evidently, again, he was mistaken.

I suggest that Bruce's original clock is yet another pointer to Fromanteel's earlier involvement in pendulum manufacture, although, admittedly, Bruce's "F" crutch relies on Huygens' Patents. Nevertheless, why should Bruce go to an independent English clockmaker who had never made pendulum clocks, unless he already had made the pivoted pendulum variety? Furthermore, that unnamed English maker also saw a definite advantage in fitting a fusee -rather than a going-barrel, or, especially, the weight drive Huygens was to apply. We know this from Oosterwijck's copy, (Appendix Three, 'open research').

Today no complete early longitude-clock is know, (see Appendix Three, Hollar's engraving dated 1667). That suggests, even on land, Huygens' weight remontoire sea-clocks were at best unreliable, so did the Dutch public infer that all Seconds’ clocks were just too troublesome for domestic use?

One wonders, too, why Huygens committed to paper his impractical flawed designs for weight sea clocks having weight remontoirs, unless, once again, it was to mislead competitors, like his 'OP' pendulum he published in Horologium. Robert Hooke's opinions on Huygens' Patents of June 16th, 1657, and March 3rd, 1665, were most forthright, also perceptive, much like Simon Douw's in 1658, (see British Museum MSS -Sloane 1039, folio 129).

By an extraordinary omission, this obvious hiatus of seconds' in Hague clocks has never been the subject of research or comment. But it is so absolute an hiatus, I surmise the Dutch makers of spring-clocks, (English and French too), agreed not to offer Seconds’ to the public, but reserved that application for scientific purposes. But why would a future King not pay the extra, had he, too, no need for Seconds?

7. ● Claims to priority.
Oosterwijck’s Royal Hague clock, with hour striking, in Kingwood and Ebony box case, may justifiably claim to be, or reasonably be considered as;

Although the ‘seconds-option’ is not fitted, this is some “Mantel Clock”.

Copyright: R.K.Piggott, February 20, 2009.