John Harrison and John Jefferies, London, c. 1748

Long-case regulator by John Harrison and John Jefferies, London c. 1748 @ Sotheby's

Clocks with direct links to John Harrison are extremely rare, and those to be found in private collections even more so. The long-case regulator shown here is one such example. First mentioned by Colonel Humphrey Quill in his biography of John Harrison, published in 1966, it was until now known only to a small circle of connoisseurs in the horological world and remained largely hidden from public view, having belonged to the same family for more than two hundred years.

This long-case regulator, built by Harrison's famous clockmaker John Jefferys, incorporates a version of his famous gridiron pendulum and was fitted with the famous rollers in oily lignum vitae wood, intended to eliminate the friction that occurs in metal components. Probably unique, this clock represents a tangible link with one of the greatest horological minds of all time. The remarkable provenance of this regulator is almost complete, but doubts still remain about its first owner and the details of how the clock was commissioned. Perhaps, after 275 years, the last pieces of this puzzle will be solved.

An engraving of John Harrison by P.L. Tassaert after a painting by Thomas King, published on 1 August 1768 @ Sotheby's Picture Library

John Harrison (1693-1776) is perhaps one of the most famous names in the world of horology. Born in Foulby, Yorkshire, the son of a carpenter, Harrison followed in his father's footsteps, but in his spare time he managed to teach himself the art of clockmaking. At the age of 20 he built his first long-case clock and, more unusually, the movement was made of wood. Only three of Harrison's early wooden long-case clocks have survived, and today they are all in public collections.

In 1714, just one year after Harrison had built his first long-case clock, the British government announced that an enormous reward of £20,000 (approximately £5 million today) would be offered to whoever solved the problem of determining longitude at sea. The natural attraction of this reward spurred the young Harrison to try to improve the accuracy of his own clocks and, in the 1720s, in partnership with his brother James, he built at least three more accurate long-case clocks of innovative design. In 1726 Harrison invented the iron gridiron pendulum to compensate for variations in the length of a pendulum caused by changes in temperature. As a carpenter, his knowledge of different woods allowed him to select lignum vitae, an extremely hard and naturally oily wood, in order to reduce friction in his clocks. His three most accurate clocks are believed to have been, at the time, among the most accurate clocks ever built. But those clocks depended on their pendulum for their accuracy, and a pendulum cannot be used on a vessel in constant motion on the high seas.

Having experimented with and developed his conventional clocks, Harrison devoted the rest of his life to solving the question of timekeeping at sea with his famous marine timekeepers H1, H2 and H3 and, eventually, H4 and H5, the forerunners of the conventional marine chronometer. The first four are in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and the fifth in the collection of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers at the Science Museum in London. In the end Harrison never received the £20,000 reward directly. In fact, nobody did. Harrison was paid in instalments for his work and only received the final sum of the reward money at the age of eighty, after a long battle with the “Board of Longitude”.

John Harrison's technological innovations and his determination to succeed against all the odds paved the way for his successors to develop marine timekeeping further and to solve the problem of determining longitude at sea for good. A remarkable legacy that survives to this day.

"The Jefferies Clock", by Jonathan Betts

Long-case regulator by John Harrison and John Jefferies, London c. 1748 @ Sotheby's

For horologists, the name of John Jefferys will invariably be associated with the great pioneer of the chronometer, John Harrison (1693-1776). It was Jefferys who was commissioned by Harrison to make the now celebrated pocket watch, dated 1753, which, with its excellent performance, inspired Harrison to change course in his timekeeping project and to concentrate on developing a smaller movement for determining longitude at sea. Sadly, Jefferys died the following year, but had he lived he would certainly have been engaged to help create H4, the timekeeper with which Harrison broke new ground in the very concept of a marine chronometer and which proved to be the first of all precision watches. The Jefferys watch is currently on display at the Clockmakers' Company Museum, on loan from The Corporation of Hull, Trinity House.

It was Jefferys' former apprentice, Larcum Kendall (1719-1790), who may have taken on that role, and it was Kendall who was commissioned to make a copy of H4, as proof that other makers could replicate Harrison's design. In this way Jefferys became closely associated with the pioneers of this magnificent period in the history of horology. Making the Harrison watch would certainly have taken Jefferys two or three years, especially as it was such an unusual design, with Harrison's unique temperature-compensated escapement, so it can reasonably be assumed that the watch was ordered around 1750 or 1751. However, there was an earlier connection between the two makers: the creation in 1748 of the celebrated and historically important regulator known simply as the 'Jefferies clock' - the subject of this Sotheby's lot.

John Jefferys

John Jefferys (c.1703-1754) was a native of Midgham, near Thatcham, a small town a few kilometres east of Newbury in Berkshire. His father was also called John Jefferys, and at least four brothers are known to have existed: Benjamin, Samuel, William and Joseph. Jefferys came from a dynasty of Quaker clockmakers going back to Daniel Quare. Quare was master to John Foster (1680-1687); Foster was in turn master to Edward Jagger (1694-1702), and Jagger was master to John Jefferys (4 November 1717, for 7 years, for £35). John was one of five apprentices whom Jagger took on at various times, another being John's brother, Joseph. Once his apprenticeship was complete, John set up in the parish of St Andrews Holborn (Harrison's parish) and married Rebecca, probably née Yeates, since John Yeates was mentioned in Jefferys' will as his brother-in-law. No children are named in the will, registered on 18 July 1754, with Rebecca as executrix.

Jefferys was said to be chiefly a maker of repeating movements. His work would thus have been widely incorporated, unsigned, into the clocks and watches of other makers. Nevertheless, he occasionally produced finished pieces himself, and a small number of good-quality clocks and watches signed by Jefferys survive today.

The Jefferys Clock

Long-case regulator by John Harrison and John Jefferies, London c. 1748 @ Sotheby's

The regulator signed with his name, however, is on an entirely different level of quality. The clock, which over the years has undergone a series of historic changes, has three separate inscriptions engraved in Latin on the dial which partly tell us the story of the piece. Information and historical descriptions of the clock come from a series of letters kept by the Lloyd Baker family [typed copies of this correspondence made for the late Robert Foulkes (1916-1986) are supplied with this lot], the clock's last owners, and the clock itself, on careful study, reveals much about its past.

Portrait of Dr Messenger Monsey (1694-1788) by Mary and Thomas Black, 1764 @ Royal College of Physicians

It remains uncertain who originally commissioned the clock from Jefferys in 1748, but it is known that by 1768 at the latest it belonged to the eccentric Dr Monsey. In translation of the Latin inscriptions on the dial, the first states that the clock was made in 1748 by John Jefferys (spelt Jefferies because there is no Y in Latin) "a talented and industrious man”. The second records that it was made "under the auspices" of John Harrison, "the most distinguished craftsman in Britain and its glory and its shame". Evidently a sympathiser with Harrison's struggles with the Board of Longitude, Monsey here recorded his opinion for posterity.

Detail of the Dial @ Sotheby's

The statement "... under the auspices of John Harrison" is open to several interpretations, but the most likely meaning seems to be that Harrison acted as a consultant on the design and its construction. Perhaps the original owner had hoped to have a clock by Harrison himself but was told that he was too busy, while remaining nonetheless a “consultant” to the project. This is the first known connection between Jefferys and Harrison, and whether Harrison already knew Jefferys and suggested him, or whether Jefferys was introduced to Harrison at that time, is not currently known. The third inscription, below the centre of the dial, appears to have been engraved over the site of the original signature, presumably “John Jefferys / London”. The inscription records that the clock was “restored” by Joseph Barber in 1768 and has “London” below it, engraved in a much more confident hand, probably from the earlier signature. The correspondence tells us that Barber was embarrassed by this addition, saying that he did not think his work on the clock deserved any mention.

Joseph Barber is probably the clockmaker who was apprenticed to William Webster from 15 September 1721 (turned over to Edward Archer), although, working in St Anne's Soho, he does not appear to have been a member of the Clockmakers' Company. In later years a certain Joseph Barber of St. Anne's, probably the same man, took on an apprentice, John Kingsmell, in 1755 for seven years and for £10.

Historic Changes

The evidence in the clock suggests that, when first made, it took the form of a regulator in the style introduced by George Graham over the two previous decades. The clock has a temperature-compensated cast-iron pendulum identical to those made by Graham and his foreman John Shelton, and a regulator-type dial. This was probably originally a single sheet of silvered brass and was designed to indicate the temperature in the arch, with a brass-and-steel bimetal suspended behind the dial to the right of the movement. This design is remarkably similar to that of a clock now in the collection of the Goldsmiths' Company in London, with equation of time indication, signed by John Berridge of Boston (although it was almost certainly made for Berridge by George Graham in London), with a bimetallic thermometer indicating in an arch in exactly the same way. This clock, which is described in a letter to the Royal Society in January 1748, is also signed by Samuel Frotheringham of Holbeach, who, according to the Royal Society letter, was the inventor of its bimetallic thermometer. How the two clocks are connected, if at all, and whether Frotheringham can really be credited with the invention of this type of thermometer, requires further research.

A careful study of the clock's movement indicates that the dial underwent an aesthetic "improvement", probably Joseph Barber's "restoration" work in 1768. The centre of the main dial and the semicircle forming the temperature scale in the arch appear to have been cut out and fitted to a polished brass broken-arch dial (probably reused from a pre-existing long-case clock), giving the clock a more conventional decorative appearance. This 'updated' dial was, however, attached to the regulator movement in its original form.

The Original Movement

Detail of the movement @ Sotheby's

The substantial month-going regulator movement, which from the Lloyd Baker correspondence appears to have remained unaltered until the 1830s, was of unique construction and shows evidence of Harrison's contribution. All the wheelwork was run on anti-friction rollers, all with centres in lignum vitae, and the movement appears originally to have been driven by twin barrels and great wheels (hence the two winding holes in the dial), the two wheels both driving a single pinion of the following wheel, mounted between them. This almost completely relieves the pivots of that second wheel of load, except for the reaction of that following (centre) pinion, a feature resembling the double-start fusee found in Harrison's H1 timekeeper. Having twin mainspring barrels, the regulator needs no maintaining power, since while one barrel is being wound the other is still running.

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Details of the movement @ Sotheby's

The Lloyd Baker correspondence records that in the early 19th century the clock was inspected by Harrison's son, William, who remembered seeing it in earlier years and confirmed that the anti-friction rollers had bosses in lignum vitae. The correspondence also describes the original escapement fitted to the clock: “There are 4 levers, two for each tooth of the escape wheel, which (…) pendulum be equal in all seasons”. Although this description is not unambiguous, it almost certainly describes what is known as the "independent-locking escapement” (‘independent-locking dead-beat escapement’). This fine escapement is in effect a typical dead-beat escapement, but it has a second pair of pallets that lock the escape wheel independently, avoiding the variable friction of the locking on the conventional pallets of typical dead-beat escapements. First published by the clockmaker Alexander Cumming (c.1732-1814) in “The Elements of Clock and Watchwork of 1766”, where he himself suggests it was his own invention, in later years it was described by the natural philosopher and mathematician John Robison (1739-1805), who states that its inventor was unknown. Thus, apart from a little oil on the impulse faces of the escapement, the clock needed no lubrication at all.

The Known History

Although the original owner of the clock is currently unknown, it is unlikely to have been Dr Monsey. Apparently it was he who engaged Barber to "update" the clock's appearance, which is unlikely had he commissioned it with its simpler regulator dial. It is also very unlikely that it was made for Harrison himself or for any member of his family. The design of the escapement, although apparently a great improvement on the conventional escapement and probably easier for a non-specialist to make than a grasshopper escapement, is still one that Harrison would not have considered ideal. Nevertheless, we can be certain that the clock belonged to Monsey in 1768.

MESSENGER MONSEY

As well as being a physician, Dr Monsey was the epitome of a "philosophical gentleman" of the period, with a taste for things mechanical. In a short biography published a year after his death, the author states:

“A certain apartment of Dr Monsey's was devoted to mechanics, which displayed a confused collection of pendulums and wheels, nails and saws, hammers and chisels… It was always his pride to have an excellent clock and a good watch; he possessed a clock of great value and exquisite finish, partly put together by Mr Barber.”

After Monsey's death in 1788, it seems the clock was acquired by Joseph Barber for use as a regulator in his shop in Dean St, Soho. Later in Barber's life, William Lloyd Baker and his friend Richard Earle Welby used to visit Barber in his shop. In the early 19th century, when Barber was already an elderly man, Welby persuaded him to part with the clock, which was subsequently restored by William Johnson of Grimalde and Johnson "in the Strand". In 1820 Welby passed the clock to his friend William Lloyd Baker, and it has remained in the latter's family ever since.

A note in the correspondence by a later member of the Lloyd Baker family records that in 1839 the clock was unreliable and was sent to the clockmaker “Mr Jeffreson” in Bruton St (probably Samuel Jefferson (Loomes, 2006) of Bruton St, 1809-1851, as 'Clockmaker to the Prince of Wales'). Unfortunately, it also states that “after repeated attempts” he was unable to solve the problem and advised that all the anti-friction elements be removed, which was done at the time. It seems highly likely that the twin-barrel drive and the escapement were also replaced at that time, along with the present bolt-and-shutter maintaining power and the jewelled "dead-beat" escapement. The notes indicate that after this work “the clock has gone pretty well ever since”. The high-quality walnut-veneered case escaped significant change during this period and, on the whole, the clock has survived the decades in good condition.

Conclusion

Although it is regrettable that later technical changes took place, the clock remains a highly important artefact in the history of Harrison and of Jefferys, with much interesting surviving evidence of its origins. It is one of the few ‘Harrisonian’ objects still outside public museum collections.

The IPR would like to thank Sotheby's for making this text available for publication. Likewise, Sotheby's thanks Jonathan Betts, MBE, Curator Emeritus of the Royal Observatory (National Maritime Museum), Greenwich, for his help in researching and cataloguing this clock.

This lot was estimated at between £300,000 and £500,000, but has since been withdrawn from the sale.

For more information about Sotheby's and this lot, visit the auctioneer's page here.