Mr. Douce observes, that these watches were "laid down 20 Henry VIII.;" and that "the Chronicles of Stow and Byddel assign the sweating sickness as a cause for discontinuing the watch." "Anno 1416. Sir Henry Barton being maiar, ordained lanthorns and lights to be hang'd out on the winter evenings, betwixt Alhallows and Candlemas." Mr. Warton, in his notes to Milton's Poems, observes, that anciently the Watchmen who cried the hours used the following or the like benedictions, which are to be found in a little poem called "The Bellman," inserted in Robert Herrick's Hesperides: "From noise of scare-fires rest ye free, From murder, Benedicite. From all mischances, that may fright Your pleasing slumbers in the night; Mercie secure ye all, and keep The goblin from ye while ye sleep." 1647. The First Plate of the Watchman, introduced in this work, is copied from a rare woodcut sheet-print engraved at the time of James the First, consisting of twelve distinct figures of trades and callings, six men and six women. Under this Watchman the following verses are introduced, but they are evidently of a more modern date than that of the woodcut: "Maids in your smocks, look to your locks, Your fire and candle light; For well 'tis known, much mischief's done By both in dead of night. Your locks and fire do not neglect, And so you may good rest expect." Under another Watchman, in the same set of figures, are the following lines, of the same type and orthography as the preceding: "A light here, maids, hang out your light, And see your horns be clear and bright, That so your candle clear may shine, Continuing from six till nine; That honest men that walk along, May see to pass safe without wrong." There were not only Watchmen, but Bellmen and Billmen. These people were armed with a long bill in case of fire, so that they could, as the houses were mostly of timber, stop the progress of the flames by cutting away connections of fuel. Of this description of men, the Second Plate, copied from a rare print prefixed to a work, entitled, "Villanies discovered by Lanthorne and Candle-light,"[10] by T. Deckar, or Dekker, 1616, is given as a specimen. The Bellman is stiled "The Childe of Darkness, a common Night-walker, a man that had no man to waite uppon him, but onely a dog, one that was a disordered person, and at midnight would beate at men's doores, bidding them (in meere mockerie) to look to their candles when they themselves were in their dead sleeps, and albeit he was an officer, yet he was but of light carriage, being knowne by the name of the Bellman of London."