English silver oval puritan verge pocket watch Circa 1635

Rare silver oval puritan verge watch
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An English silver oval puritan verge pocket watch with full plate fire gilt movement, circa 1635, elongated pierced and engraved balance cock, plain flat steel balance, gut line fusee, ratchet and click set-up, baluster pillars, plain silver dial, chapter ring with Roman numerals and half-hour divisions, a single hand of floriate design, plain inner case with short terminal, winding aperture with sliding cover, rock crystal with brass rim secured by two screws, plain polished outer case.
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Diameter: 50 mm including pendant
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Signed: D Bouquet Londres
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Completely devoid of any decorative engraving to the silver dial and cases, this is a typical ‘Puritan’ watch – a name given to the style in the 19th century. It has a number of characteristics which suggest it is from the mid-1630s: the dial has no quarter-hour divisions, which were in common use by the end of the decade, the inner case has a short terminal, a feature which was soon dropped (it is of polished steel and locates in a hole in the silver outer). David Bouquet was admitted to the Blacksmiths’ Company in 1628 and the Clockmakers’ Company in 1632. Of French origins, Bouquet was a fine maker and died in 1665, a year before the Great Fire of London.

Owners of watches by David Bouquet in the 17th Century appear to have had rather an unfortunate proclivity for losing their watches. Britten, in Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers, lists three such losses mentioned in the London Gazette; one advertisement from January 10th, 1680 states: “Lost lately a steel watch, finely cut and the work of it made by Bouquet, in a black shagreen case. Whoever hath found the same, if they bring it to Mr. Michael Scrimpshire, Goldsmith, at the sign of the Golden Lyon in Fleet St., shall have 20s reward.”