Fromanteel, A
NAME:
Fromanteel, Ahasuerus
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Introduced pendulum clocks to England and founded a dynasty of clockmakers
NICKNAME/ALIAS
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
25 February 1606/7, Norwich, Norfolk, England
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
February 1693, London, England. Aged 86
DISCIPLINE:
Clockmaker
FIELD:
Horology
LANGUAGE:
English
PARENTS:
Father: Murdoch Fromanteel
Mother: Leah Fromanteel
SIBLINGS:
4 brothers
2 daughters
SPOUSE:
Maria de Bruihne
Sarah Winnock
CHILDREN:
By Bruihne:
4 surviving sons, all became clockmakers: John, Ahaseurus, Abraham, Daniel
2 daughters: Maria (married a clockmaker), Elizabeth (married a clockmaker)
EDUCATION:
Not known
MAJOR WORK:
None
LIFE AND TIMES:
Fromanteel was the son of an English-born wood-turner and chair-maker whose Flemish father probably came to England to escape religious persecution. The Fromanteels were part of a community of Flemish Protestant immigrants in East Anglia known as ‘Dutch’. After serving his apprenticeship, probably with Jacques van Barton, a clasp-maker and merchant in Norwich, Fromanteel moved to London in 1629.
He joined the ‘Dutch’ community of prosperous traders in London established himself as a clockmaker. He became a member of the Blacksmith’s Company in 1631. A year later he joined the newly established Clockmakers’ Company.
It is probable that he was a journeyman clockmaker at this time. He started out making ordinary lantern clocks with a balance-wheel escapement, and also some of the more expensive spring-driven table clocks. Lantern clocks were weight-driven hanging wall clocks and they became the people’s clock – although only a small proportion of the population could afford them. They needed winding every twelve hours and had no minute hand. Although clocks with balance-wheel escapement were inaccurate, they were better time-keepers than spring-driven clocks which were affected by the quality of the spring.
During the Civil War in England, Fromanteel supported Parliament and around 1646 left the Dutch Reformed Church and joined the Anabaptists, who were associated with the parliamentary Independents, the group to which <a supporter of> Cromwell* belonged. Whether Fromanteel made a clock for Cromwell is unknown but the leader of the Parliamentary forces directly intervened with the Clockmakers Company in 1556 to get Fromanteel full membership of the Company, a status which enabled him to become a freeman of the City of London.
Around this time, Fromanteel began making pendulum clocks, although the date of his first clock of this type is unknown. ( In 1656 <work related to> Christiaan Huyghens* in Holland adapted the principle of the pendulum to make the first pendulum clock, and in 1657 Fromanteel’s son, John, was apprenticed to a clockmaker in The Hague who constructed pendulum clocks). In 1658 Fromanteel put an advertisement in the press in England, stating that he was first person in England to make pendulum clocks, that he had demonstrated such a clock to Cromwell, and that he had stock for sale.
The advantages of the pendulum clock were that it had a greater accuracy than other types of clock and that it was less susceptible to changes in the weather. Its greater accuracy meant that its the length of run could be increased from once or two windings a day, to one a week, one a month or even to one a year. This involved using heavier driving weights. A long wooden case was used to contain these weights and so the clock became an item of furniture for the first time.
Although pendulum clocks revolutionized the clock industry, Fromanteel did not have the right political or religious connections after the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, and he was not appointed as the King’s Clockmaker, nor given any official recognition of his contribution. Nevertheless, when Christiaan Huyghens was in London in 1661, he went to Fromanteel’s workshop rather than any other clockmaker’s. Huyghens was accompanied by the diarist <met> Evelyn*.
Fromanteel left London during the Great Plague in 1665. He went to Colchester but had to leave there when the Plague spread. In 1666 his London premises were destroyed in the Great Fire of London. It seems likely that his sons took over his London business and by 1668 Fromanteel had also moved to Holland where it is presumed he set up a business in Amsterdam. He remained there for eight years before returning to London. The long pendulum clock was introduced in the late 1660’s and it displaced the short bob-pendulum which Fromanteel had introduced, though the shorter version continued to be used in bracket clocks and some lantern clocks.
ASSESSMENT: Fromanteel was the most important clockmaker of his time because he introduced the pendulum clock to Britain and this set the pattern for clock-making for the next two centuries.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS; None
ONELINER: Ahasuerus Fromanteel, early pendulum clock-maker
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Loomes, Brian, The Early Clockmakers of Great Britain, NAG Press Ltd., London, 1981
Loomes, Brian, Watchmakers and Clockmakers of the World, NAG Press Ltd., London, 1976
Loomes, Brian, Country Clocks and Their London Origins, David & Charles Ltd., Newton Abbot, Devon, 1976
Loomes, Brian, The Fromanteel Story, in Antiquarian Horology vol ix, no 2 ,March 1975