Memorial ring of Charles I.
Miss Gerard is in possession of a memorial gold ring which is stated to have been given to Bishop Juxon by Charles I., on the scaffold, since which period it has been preserved as an heirloom in the family of the present owner. The ring appears to resemble those of the period of Henry VIII. It is described and engraved in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for October 1797. The bezel is hexagonal, with death’s-head in white enamel on black ground, surrounded by the legend ‘BEHOLD . THE . ENDE;’ round the edge is the motto ‘RATHER . DEATH . THEN . FALS . FAITH.’ At the back the initials ‘M’ and ‘L’ tied with a mourning ribbon.
This interesting ‘memorial’ was exhibited at the Loan Exhibition of Ancient and Modern Jewellery at the South Kensington Museum in 1872.
In the Braybrooke Collection is one of the Royalist mourning-rings, of gold, with slight hoop beautifully inlaid with black enamel, the top surmounted by an oval box three quarters of an inch long, the sides of which are ornamented with perpendicular ovals of black and white enamel alternately. The inside or under part of the box is inlaid with fifteen longer ovals in a similar manner, round a black centre, in imitation of a sun-flower. The box contains a large and beautifully-painted portrait of Charles I. on blue enamel ground, over a surface as large as half an acorn. The base of this is bound by a narrow band of plain gold. Lord Braybrooke described this ring as one of the most beautiful he had seen, and, besides the superiority of the workmanship, the likeness is well preserved.
In the same collection is a Royalist gold mourning-ring with black enamel inlaid upon the shoulders of the hoop and also upon the circular box on the top, which contains a sort of love-knot, or possibly intended for the royal cipher, below a cut crystal setting.
After the execution of Dr. John Hewett, chaplain to Charles I., and the object of Cromwell’s vindictive cruelty, a mourning-ring inscribed ‘Herodes necuit Johannem,’ was worn by the Royalists.
The mourning-ring for King Charles II. bore the inscription ‘Chs. Rex. Remem.—obiit—ber.: 6th Feb. 1685.’
In the Waterton Collection at the South Kensington Museum is a memorial gold ring, with oval bezel set with crystal, beneath which is a crown with the initials ‘C. R. K. B.’ in gold, over hair (Charles II. and Catharine of Braganza). English. Date about 1685. Diameter, nine-tenths of an inch.
Devices illustrative of death have frequently formed the subjects of mourning-rings. Among some antiquities found in Sussex, and exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries in March 1866, was the fragment of a mourning-ring set with a coffin-shaped crystal, on which was delicately engraved a skeleton.
In the Braybrooke Collection is a gold ring of about the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century, with a hexagonal tablet, which is inlaid with a white stone engraved with a death’s-head; round it on the gold are engraved the words ‘Dye to Live.’[68]