~Marching Watch of London~.]
Mr. Douce imagines the word cresset to have been derived from the French
word _croiset_, a cruet or earthen pot.
When the cresset light was stationary it served as a beacon, or answered
the purpose of a fixed lamp, and in this way our ancestors illuminated
or lighted up their streets. There is a volume of sermons, by Samuel
Ward, printed 1617-24, with a wood-cut frontispiece, representing two of
these fixed cressets or street-lamps, with verses between them, in
relation to his name and character, as a faithful watchman. In the first
lines old Ward is addressed thus:--
“_Watch_ WARD, and keepe thy Garments tight,
For I come thiefe-like at Midnight.”
Whereto WARD answers the injunction, to _watch_, in the lines
following:--
“All-seeing, never-slumbering LORD;
Be thou my _Watch_, Ile be thy WARD.”
Ward’s “lamp, or beacon,” is transferred from his frontispiece to the
next column, in order to show wherein our ancient standing lamps
differed from the present.
[Illustration: ~An Old Beacon~,