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It is a closed helm facing dexter, which may or may not be indicative of a specific rank.

It does appear to be a tree in the bottom left (fourth) quarter.

The five roundels may, or may not, indicate the five holy wounds. This pattern of "two, one, and two" is common for five charges on a field.

The pattern in the upper left (second) quarter reminds me of a square buckle, but I cannot be certain that such an identification is correct.

David

I was going to make a comment, but realized I had the tinctures of the field and charge reversed. Sorry about that!

Looking through Fairbairn's Crests, while there are a lot of families who have a griffin's head for a crest, there is only one that also matches the motto: Cleg/Clegg.

I believe your beautiful watch once belonged to a Clegg.

David

It is a little tougher without knowing any of the colors.

On the assumption that the shield is correctly hatched (a system of varying lines to denote the colors), then the shield is sable, or black.

Looking up in Papworth's Ordinary of British Armorials, and assuming the flowers on the bend are cinquefoils, we find the following:

Sable on a bend argent three cinquefoils gules (black shield, white bend, red flowers), for Betts and Dintres/Dyntres/Dyntees/Dyntrees/Dyntrey (these last are all probably spelling variants of the same name)

Sable on a bend argent three cinquefoils sable (black field, white bend, black flowers), for Berendon/Berondon

If the flowers are meant to be roses, then we have:

Sable on a bend argent three roses gules (black field, white bend, red roses), for Roos/Rosse/Roose/Rose, and Edward Smallwell, Bishop of St. David's 1783.

According to Fairbairn's Crests, the crest of A stag's head collared was borne by Stanley. (Which, alas, does not match any of the names we potentially found for the arms!)

Now, that said, I went and looked at some coats of arms as used in the United States, and found this:

Sable on a bend argent three cinquefoils (cited in Crozier's General Armory and Bolton's American Armory), and a related coat, Sable on a bend argent three cinquefoils gules all within a bordure engrailed argent (cited in Matthew's American Armoury and Blue Book and McKenzie's Colonial Families of the United States of America. Both of these coats of arms are associated with the crest Issuant from a ducal coronet or a buck's head gules attired or gorged argent, which design matches your illustration.

Both of these shields, and the crests, are all ascribed to the surname: Betts.

So, assuming that the shield is supposed to be black (and that is only an assumption right now), the shield and crest probably belong to someone in the Betts family, members of whom came to America at the latest before 1687, when Daniel Betts married Mary Fish in Newtown, Massachusetts Bay.

I hope that this information is helpful to you. If you have any questions about anything I've said here, or if I can be of further assistance, please let me know.

David

I seem to remember that there is only 1 herald on duty at any one time?
And that queries have to go through the herald on duty.

Each herald in the College is rotated through a position called "Herald in Waiting," whose job (for a week at a time, if I am recalling it correctly) is to respond to all inquiries that come to the College that week. All of the other heralds are generally still there and "on duty" working with their clients, they are just not the ones who receive incoming inquiries (until it is their turn again to be Herald in Waiting).

David