the Alfonsine clock) and it
is supported on a square axle by a bracket, the axle being wedged in the
traditional fashion. The projections at the edge of the wheel might be
gear teeth, but more likely they are used only for tripping the striking
mechanism. If it were not for the running water spout it would be very
close to the Alfonsine model; but with this evidence it seems impossible
to arrive at a clear mechanical interpretation.

From the adjacent region there is another account of a striking water
clock, the evidence being inscriptions on slates, discovered in Villers
Abbey near Brussels;[35] these may be closely dated as 1267 or 1268 and
provide the remains of a memorandum for the sacrist and his assistants
in charge of the clock.

Always set the clock, however long you may delay on [the
letter "A"] afterwards you shall pour water from the
little pot (pottulo) that is there, into the reservoir
(cacabum) until it reaches the prescribed level, and you
must do the same when you set [the clock] after compline
so that you may sleep soundly.

A quite different sort of evidence is to be had from the writings of
Robertus Anglicus in 1271 where one gets the impression that just at
this time there was active interest in the attempt to make a
weight-driven anaphoric clock and to regulate its motion by some
unstated method so that it would keep time with the diurnal rotation of
the heavens:[36]

Nor it is possible for any clock to follow the judgment of
astronomy with complete accuracy. Yet clockmakers
(artifices horologiorum) are trying to make a wheel
(circulum) which will make one complete revolution for
every one of the equinoctial circle, but they cannot quite
perfect their work. But if they could, it would be a
really accurate clock (horologium verax valde) and worth
more than an astrolabe or other astronomical instrument
for reckoning the hours, if one knew how to do this
according to the method aforesaid. The method of making
such a clock would be this, that a man make a disc
(circulum) of uniform weight in every part so far as could
possibly be done. Then a lead weight should be hung from
the axis of that wheel (axi ipsius rote) and this weight
would move that wheel so that it would complete one
revolution from sunrise to sunrise, minus as much time as
about one degree rises according to an approximately
correct estimate. For from sunrise to sunrise, the whole