| Height | 23 inches high |
| Provenance | Originally made for Archibald Campbell (1682-1761), created 1st Earl of Ilay in 1706, succeeding as 3rd Duke of Argyll in 1743; Sotheby’s, 16 December 1969, lot 37; The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA, inventory no.546; Sotheby’s New York, 2 Dec. 1999, lot 6, sold for $1,047,500; John C Taylor Collection, inventory no.75. |
| Diameter | 17 inches |
| Exhibited | 1980s-90s, The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, USA; |
| Notes | Signed Rich. Glynne Londini Fecit on the circular base plate which is also engraved with an equation of time scale and is carried on three screw feet for levelling in conjunction with two spirit levels set across the plate at right angles. The centre of the base plate carries a large inset compass with a 32 point wind rose of which all the points are named with those for the cardinal and intermediate points distinguished by decorative foliate engraving on a blacked ground. Mounted above the compass on the central portion of the base, which may be rotated by a central rack-and-pinion, is the meridian ring carried on two baluster pillars. Mounted within the meridian ring, which has stiff oak leaf decoration on each edge, is a second ring, carrying two struts, the central pierced and engraved equinoctial plate engraved with an hour scale (I-XII twice), reading to one minute. Set in the same plane as this ring at the South (lower) end of the vertical plate is a rimmed plate engraved with a second 32-point compass rose surrounded by a degree scale. This plate may be adjusted in an East-West direction over a range of some 7 degrees to correct for magnetic declination. At the North (top) end is a glazed box containing a sidereal clock-dial (I-XII twice). This dial is fitted with two pierced hands and with a geared mechanism beneath the dial by means of which the whole plate may be rotated. Engraved on one side of the central vertical plate is a zodiacal calendar scale (0 degrees Aries = 10 ½ March) against which an index with sights in the vanes at the scale end may be set by means of a rack-and-pinion adjustment. Ilay’s heraldic achievement of coat-of-arms, leopard supporters, coronet, and motto are engraved on a silvered cresting surmounting the dial, while the piercing of the central plate is worked with the reversed cypher AC (for Archibald Campbell), beneath an earl’s coronet, readable from both sides. |
Exhibit № 33: The Ilay Glynne Ring‑dial. Circa 1715
An exceptionally important and rare George I brass and silvered mechanical equinoctial standing ring-dial of large size by Richard Glynne, London, commissioned by the 1st Earl of Ilay, later 3rd Duke of Argyll (succeeded 1743)
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Richard Glynne (1681-1755) was apprenticed to the well-known instrument-maker Henry Wynne in the Clockmakers’ Company in 1696 and became free in 1705. He was Steward of the Clockmakers’ in 1725. He established himself next door to the Latin Coffee House in Ave Maria Lane, near St Paul’s London, where the same year he presented himself as ‘a very skilful and Accurate Mathematical Instrument-Maker’ for ‘Azimuth Compasses…as also other things in the first English edition of Guillet’s, The Gentleman’s Dictionary (London, 1705).
Soon after gaining his Freedom in 1705 he married Anne Lea, daughter of the map and globe maker Philip Lea (d. 1700) and his mother-in-law, also Anne (d.1730), joined Glynne in partnership from at least 1712, to 1725. In December that year they issued proposals for the production of 36-inch diameter globes. By this time, Glynne was working from his partner’s address at the Atlas and Hercules in Cheapside where he remained until c. 1718 from when he is found opposite Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, about 15 houses east of Graham’s (previously Tompion’s) shop on the corner of Water Lane on the opposite side of Fleet Street. In 1725 with Anne Lea he reissued Philip Lea’s map of London, Westminster and Southwark but his main activity was all sorts of Mathematical Instruments either for Land or Sea, according to the newest improvements as he stated in an advertisement in 1726.
A range of mathematical instruments – sectors, drawing instruments, sun-dials, armillary spheres and armillary planetaria – are known by him, all of clean, uncluttered, appearance but finely and precisely engraved as in the current, most important example of his work. Glynne, who had taken five apprentices during his working career, ceased trading in 1730 when his stock was auctioned from the leading optician, Edward Scarlett’s shop. He had, in effect made enough to retire at the early age of 48/9, and he died 25 years later in 1755.
An association between Glynne and the clockmaker Richard Street is evident from the two very similar clocks signed by one and the other, each with a hand of varying length read against an eccentrically shaped chapter ring and surmounted overall by a globe moonphase, (the Glynne, Ewbank’s sale, 9 Dec 2009, lot 647; the Street, Sotheby’s, 29 May 1982, lot 5.). Street being closely associated with Tompion, Glynne was clearly part of the circle of scientific and mathematical instrument makers that orbited around Tompion and then his successor, Graham.
To use this instrument, it is set by its compass to align its orientation with the earth’s N/S axis, and levelled, the sight arm then being moved until the Sun’s rays fall on the circle, so that Solar time can be read from the dial at the top of the instrument. Essentially, Glynne’s present dial is his reprise of the model first previously made by John Rowley for Queen Anne’s consort, Prince George of Denmark, before 1708 [see, Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, p.36 (illus)], and improved upon in Rowley’s subsequent examples by the addition of a surmounting glazed cylindrical box containing the mechanism driving the hour and minute hands contained therein, as on Glynne’s for the Earl of Ilay. Other examples of Rowley’s developed type are in a private collection and at the Whipple Museum, Cambridge. Another example by Glynne, in silver, was made for the 2nd Duke of Devonshire, and is similarly with the patron’s coat-of-arms and cypher, remaining at Chatsworth to this day. See also the Chesham Quare dual time clock, inventory no.21 in this collection, possibly acquired by the 2nd Duke of Devonshire.
The arms and monogram are those of Archibald Campbell (1682-1761), Earl of Ilay (so created in 1706) who succeeded his older brother as the 3rd Duke of Arygll in 1743. He was initially called Lord Archibald Campbell, being the second son of the 1st Duke of Argyll. A Scottish nobleman, politician, lawyer, soldier, businessman, banker, and patron of the arts and sciences, he was educated at Eton and the Universities of Glasgow and Utrecht, at the last studying civil law. He next proceeded initially to a military career, fighting under first the Duke of Marlborough and later under his own brother, the 2nd duke, at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, defeating the forces of the Old Pretender, the leader of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion.
In recognition of his keen sponsorship of the Union of England and Scotland while a Commissioner for the Treaty of Union with Scotland, Archibald Campbell was in 1706 raised to the peerage as Earl of Ilay by Queen Anne, and following the 1708 Act of Union was elected a representative Scottish peer to the House of Lords at Westminster, which he remained for life. He became the most powerful man in Scotland and its political leader, being appointed Lord Privy Seal (Scotland) in 1721-33, followed by Lord Great Seal (Scotland) until his death. The British prime minister, Robert Walpole delegated to him control of royal patronage in Scotland, so much so that he earned the nickname ‘King of Scotland’.
In business Ilay was a promoter of the Equivalent Company in 1724 (which akin to the South Sea Company in England, proposed taking on the national debt of Scotland, in the process needing to be rescued from bankruptcy), and also was a founder of the Equivalent’s offshoot, the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1727, acting as its first governor until 1737. Hence his portrait has appeared on the bank’s sterling banknotes.
Besides a townhouse in London, in 1722 Ilay acquired a country villa, Whitton Place, near Twickenham, west of London. Here he employed first the architect James Gibbs to design a greenhouse or orangery and possibly also the Gothic revival tower at the opposing end of a landscape canal. Ilay then in 1735 built a Palladian villa to the design of the architect Roger Morris, whom he also used from 1735 to design his Scottish clan seat at Inverary Castle. Meanwhile at Whitton he was filling the grounds with exotic trees, some of which were moved after his death to the queen’s botanical garden at Kew, where some still survive.
His extensive and valuable library at Inverary and his collecting trees at Whitton (causing him to be called ‘Treemonger’ by Horace Walpole), bespeak of Ilay’s interest in the sciences, today perhaps his most underrated field of endeavour, the effect perhaps of the way Ilay was never a ‘joiner’, shunning memberships and so was never elected FRS, otherwise deserved. He helped found the faculty of medicine at Edinburgh University. He assembled a significant cabinet of mathematical instruments and Roger Emerson’s essay, ‘The Scientific Interests of Archibald Campbell, 1st Earl of Ilay and 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682-1761)’, in Annals of Science, vol. 59, 2002, Issue 1, p.21-56 (published online Nov. 2010) gives a comprehensive assessment of Ilay’s scientific endeavour, the introductory abstract saying,
Amateur scientists were important in the science of the eighteenth century as patrons, investors in talent and new equipment, as the maintainers of gardens and libraries, and, occasionally, as men who could and did make discoveries or significant innovations. The article shows that the Earl of Ilay (later 3rd Duke of Argyll) was one of these men. He was also much more. Ilay’s interests in science, because of his important political position in Scotland, touched not only his immediate friends but helped to reshape Scottish culture itself. This essay looks at his scientific interests, his political career, and his patronage to argue that the results of his long career in politics were to institutionalize a new set of modern values in most Scottish institutions.
In 1743 Ilay succeeded his elder brother as the 3rd Duke of Argyll, and where he had previously exercised power through political office and influence, he was now holder of Scotland’s most prestigious dukedom. Nonetheless, the commissioning of such superb instruments as the present dial by Glynne is a reflection of both Ilay’s personal interests and the ‘soft power’ exercised through the possession and use of such instruments.
Despite his success in business and politics, Campbell’s married life was disastrous. He separated from Mary Whitfield soon after their wedding in 1712, and she died in 1723. However, he found happiness with his mistress Anne Williams (née Shireburn), and she gave him an illegitimate son, William, who took the Campbell name. On 15th April 1761, Archibald Campbell collapsed and died. The Argyll Estate and Scottish property went to his cousin and successor, John Campbell, but all his English properties were left to his mistress and their son. He left a year’s wages to his servants, all apart from his cook, who he believed was overpaid. The title of Ilay died with him, and his body was transported by sea to Edinburgh, and then overland, for burial at Kilmun on the Holy Loch, south of Inverary Castle.
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Product Description
Richard Glynne (1681-1755) was apprenticed to the well-known instrument-maker Henry Wynne in the Clockmakers’ Company in 1696 and became free in 1705. He was Steward of the Clockmakers’ in 1725. He established himself next door to the Latin Coffee House in Ave Maria Lane, near St Paul’s London, where the same year he presented himself as ‘a very skilful and Accurate Mathematical Instrument-Maker’ for ‘Azimuth Compasses…as also other things in the first English edition of Guillet’s, The Gentleman’s Dictionary (London, 1705).
Soon after gaining his Freedom in 1705 he married Anne Lea, daughter of the map and globe maker Philip Lea (d. 1700) and his mother-in-law, also Anne (d.1730), joined Glynne in partnership from at least 1712, to 1725. In December that year they issued proposals for the production of 36-inch diameter globes. By this time, Glynne was working from his partner’s address at the Atlas and Hercules in Cheapside where he remained until c. 1718 from when he is found opposite Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, about 15 houses east of Graham’s (previously Tompion’s) shop on the corner of Water Lane on the opposite side of Fleet Street. In 1725 with Anne Lea he reissued Philip Lea’s map of London, Westminster and Southwark but his main activity was all sorts of Mathematical Instruments either for Land or Sea, according to the newest improvements as he stated in an advertisement in 1726.
A range of mathematical instruments – sectors, drawing instruments, sun-dials, armillary spheres and armillary planetaria – are known by him, all of clean, uncluttered, appearance but finely and precisely engraved as in the current, most important example of his work. Glynne, who had taken five apprentices during his working career, ceased trading in 1730 when his stock was auctioned from the leading optician, Edward Scarlett’s shop. He had, in effect made enough to retire at the early age of 48/9, and he died 25 years later in 1755.
An association between Glynne and the clockmaker Richard Street is evident from the two very similar clocks signed by one and the other, each with a hand of varying length read against an eccentrically shaped chapter ring and surmounted overall by a globe moonphase, (the Glynne, Ewbank’s sale, 9 Dec 2009, lot 647; the Street, Sotheby’s, 29 May 1982, lot 5.). Street being closely associated with Tompion, Glynne was clearly part of the circle of scientific and mathematical instrument makers that orbited around Tompion and then his successor, Graham.
To use this instrument, it is set by its compass to align its orientation with the earth’s N/S axis, and levelled, the sight arm then being moved until the Sun’s rays fall on the circle, so that Solar time can be read from the dial at the top of the instrument. Essentially, Glynne’s present dial is his reprise of the model first previously made by John Rowley for Queen Anne’s consort, Prince George of Denmark, before 1708 [see, Garnier & Carter, The Golden Age of English Horology, 2015, p.36 (illus)], and improved upon in Rowley’s subsequent examples by the addition of a surmounting glazed cylindrical box containing the mechanism driving the hour and minute hands contained therein, as on Glynne’s for the Earl of Ilay. Other examples of Rowley’s developed type are in a private collection and at the Whipple Museum, Cambridge. Another example by Glynne, in silver, was made for the 2nd Duke of Devonshire, and is similarly with the patron’s coat-of-arms and cypher, remaining at Chatsworth to this day. See also the Chesham Quare dual time clock, inventory no.21 in this collection, possibly acquired by the 2nd Duke of Devonshire.
The arms and monogram are those of Archibald Campbell (1682-1761), Earl of Ilay (so created in 1706) who succeeded his older brother as the 3rd Duke of Arygll in 1743. He was initially called Lord Archibald Campbell, being the second son of the 1st Duke of Argyll. A Scottish nobleman, politician, lawyer, soldier, businessman, banker, and patron of the arts and sciences, he was educated at Eton and the Universities of Glasgow and Utrecht, at the last studying civil law. He next proceeded initially to a military career, fighting under first the Duke of Marlborough and later under his own brother, the 2nd duke, at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, defeating the forces of the Old Pretender, the leader of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion.
In recognition of his keen sponsorship of the Union of England and Scotland while a Commissioner for the Treaty of Union with Scotland, Archibald Campbell was in 1706 raised to the peerage as Earl of Ilay by Queen Anne, and following the 1708 Act of Union was elected a representative Scottish peer to the House of Lords at Westminster, which he remained for life. He became the most powerful man in Scotland and its political leader, being appointed Lord Privy Seal (Scotland) in 1721-33, followed by Lord Great Seal (Scotland) until his death. The British prime minister, Robert Walpole delegated to him control of royal patronage in Scotland, so much so that he earned the nickname ‘King of Scotland’.
In business Ilay was a promoter of the Equivalent Company in 1724 (which akin to the South Sea Company in England, proposed taking on the national debt of Scotland, in the process needing to be rescued from bankruptcy), and also was a founder of the Equivalent’s offshoot, the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1727, acting as its first governor until 1737. Hence his portrait has appeared on the bank’s sterling banknotes.
Besides a townhouse in London, in 1722 Ilay acquired a country villa, Whitton Place, near Twickenham, west of London. Here he employed first the architect James Gibbs to design a greenhouse or orangery and possibly also the Gothic revival tower at the opposing end of a landscape canal. Ilay then in 1735 built a Palladian villa to the design of the architect Roger Morris, whom he also used from 1735 to design his Scottish clan seat at Inverary Castle. Meanwhile at Whitton he was filling the grounds with exotic trees, some of which were moved after his death to the queen’s botanical garden at Kew, where some still survive.
His extensive and valuable library at Inverary and his collecting trees at Whitton (causing him to be called ‘Treemonger’ by Horace Walpole), bespeak of Ilay’s interest in the sciences, today perhaps his most underrated field of endeavour, the effect perhaps of the way Ilay was never a ‘joiner’, shunning memberships and so was never elected FRS, otherwise deserved. He helped found the faculty of medicine at Edinburgh University. He assembled a significant cabinet of mathematical instruments and Roger Emerson’s essay, ‘The Scientific Interests of Archibald Campbell, 1st Earl of Ilay and 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682-1761)’, in Annals of Science, vol. 59, 2002, Issue 1, p.21-56 (published online Nov. 2010) gives a comprehensive assessment of Ilay’s scientific endeavour, the introductory abstract saying,
Amateur scientists were important in the science of the eighteenth century as patrons, investors in talent and new equipment, as the maintainers of gardens and libraries, and, occasionally, as men who could and did make discoveries or significant innovations. The article shows that the Earl of Ilay (later 3rd Duke of Argyll) was one of these men. He was also much more. Ilay’s interests in science, because of his important political position in Scotland, touched not only his immediate friends but helped to reshape Scottish culture itself. This essay looks at his scientific interests, his political career, and his patronage to argue that the results of his long career in politics were to institutionalize a new set of modern values in most Scottish institutions.
In 1743 Ilay succeeded his elder brother as the 3rd Duke of Argyll, and where he had previously exercised power through political office and influence, he was now holder of Scotland’s most prestigious dukedom. Nonetheless, the commissioning of such superb instruments as the present dial by Glynne is a reflection of both Ilay’s personal interests and the ‘soft power’ exercised through the possession and use of such instruments.
Despite his success in business and politics, Campbell’s married life was disastrous. He separated from Mary Whitfield soon after their wedding in 1712, and she died in 1723. However, he found happiness with his mistress Anne Williams (née Shireburn), and she gave him an illegitimate son, William, who took the Campbell name. On 15th April 1761, Archibald Campbell collapsed and died. The Argyll Estate and Scottish property went to his cousin and successor, John Campbell, but all his English properties were left to his mistress and their son. He left a year’s wages to his servants, all apart from his cook, who he believed was overpaid. The title of Ilay died with him, and his body was transported by sea to Edinburgh, and then overland, for burial at Kilmun on the Holy Loch, south of Inverary Castle.
Additional information
| Dimensions | 5827373 cm |
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