ch
John Knox is said to have preached. It is likely the hour-glass is there
"even unto this day" (unless abstracted by some relic hunter); and if it
could be depended on as an original appendage to the pulpits, would prove
that its use was coeval with the times of the Scottish Reformation. I think
its high antiquity as certain as the oaken pulpits themselves.

At an early period the general poverty of the country, and the scarcity of
clocks and watches, must have given rise to the adoption of the hour
sand-glass, a simple instrument, but yet elegant and impressive, for the
measurement of a brief portion of our fleeting span.

G. N.

Glasgow.

On the 31st May, 1640, the churchwardens of great Staughton, co.
Huntingdonshire, "are, and stand charged with (among other church goods), a
pulpit standinge in the church, having a cover over the same, and an
houre-glasse adjoininge."

Copy of a cutting from a magazine, name and date unknown:

"Among Dr. Rawlinson's manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, No. 941
contains collection of _Miscellaneous Discourses_, by Mr. Lewis of
Margate, in Kent, whence the following extract has been made:

"'It appears that these hour-glasses were coeval with our Reformation.
In a fine frontispiece, prefixed to the Holy Bible of the bishops'
translation, printed in 4to. by John Day, 1569, Archbishop Parker is
represented in the pulpit with an hour-glass standing on his right
hand; ours, here, stood on the left without any frame. It was proper
that some time should be prescribed for the length of the sermon, and
clocks and watches were not then so common as they are now. This time
of an hour continued till the Revolution, as appears by Bishop
Sanderson's, Tillotson's, Stillingfleet's, Dr. Barrow's, and others'
sermons, printed during that time.'

"The writer of this article was informed in 1811 by the Rev. Mr.
Burder, who had the curacy of St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, that the
large silver hour-glass formerly used in that church, was melted down
into two staff heads for the parish beadles.

"An hour-glass frame of iron, fixed in the wall by the side of the
pulpit, was remaining in 1797 in the church of North Moor, in
Oxfordshire."

JOSEPH RIX.

St. Neots, Huntingdonshire.

In many of our old pulpits built during the seventeenth century, when hour
sermons were the rule, and thirty minutes the exception, the