English verge watch with inner rotating hour dial Circa 1665

Extraordinary early silver cased verge watch with minute hand
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An English verge pocket watch with fire gilt full plate movement with early four wheel train, circa 1665. Worm and wheel set up, gut line fusee, balance cock pierced and engraved with floral decoration, Egyptian pillars, silver dial with central disk engraved with Eros atop an hourglass holding an arrow indicating the hours upon an inner track, central blued steel decoratively turned minute hand, hours marked by Roman numerals, outer minute track with Arabic numerals, outermost silver date ring with a small indicator on gilt ring beneath, plain polished silver case, covered winding aperture to rear.
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Diameter: 52 mm
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Signed: Robert Whitwell Fecit
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Due to the inaccuracy of early watches, relatively few were made with minute hands prior to the introduction of the balance spring. Watches before the 18th Century had a variety of different dials that incorporated minutes and hours. Makers often attempted to display an accurate time using only one indicator and created dials such as the differential dial, the six hour dial, or the wandering hour dial. After 1700, dials became much more standardized. Many of the watches with wandering hour dials had some mark of royalty on them, such as a portrait or an engraving of the royal arms.

Robert Whitwell was apprenticed to Robert Grinkin in June 1642 and was a Freeman of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1649. He lost his premises in the Great Fire of 1666 and was given ten shillings charity by the Clockmakers’ Company for ‘relief in his sickness’ in 1673/74. He was dead by 1678.