The judgment of the commissioners appointed to examine into the marriage was to dissolve it, and it was so pronounced in the Bishop of London’s palace in 1562. Lady Hertford sank under this cruel conduct of the Queen, and on her dying bed called to her attendants to bring her the box in which her wedding-ring was. She first took from it a ring with a pointed diamond in it, and said to Sir Owen Hopton (at whose house, Cockfield Hall, Suffolk, she had been staying): ‘Here, Sir Owen, deliver this unto my lord; it is the ring that I received of him, and gave myself unto him, and gave him my faith.’
‘What say you, madam,’ answered Sir Owen, ‘was this your wedding-ring?’
‘No, Sir Owen, this is the ring of my assurance unto my lord, and there is my wedding-ring,’ taking another ring of gold out of the box. This consisted of five links, having engraved in it the verses of the Earl’s composition, which she had exhibited to the commissioners of inquiry. (See chapter on ‘Posy, Inscription, and Motto Rings.’)
‘Deliver this,’ she said, ‘unto my lord, and pray him, as I have been a faithful and true wife, that he would be a loving and natural father unto my children, to whom I give the same blessing that God gave unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ (See chapter on ‘Remarkable Rings.’)
Ring with representation of Lucretia.
A gemmel-ring of the fifteenth century, in the Londesborough Collection, bears an engraved head of Lucretia, the same kind as that mentioned by Shakspeare (‘Twelfth Night,’ act ii. sc. v.) where Malvolio, breaking open the letter, purporting to be in the handwriting of his mistress, says:—
By your leave, wax. Soft! and the impressure her Lucrece, with which she uses to seal.
Lucretia is seen grasping her dagger. The clasped hands, adopted on the gemmel-rings, became a frequent emblem on the solid wedding-ring.
