The cross at the beginning is of the same size as the letters, that between the words very small.
You dear!
(The meaning is thus conjectured of, possibly, a rebus, or canting device, on a silver signet-ring, found in the bed of the river Nene, at Wisbeach St. Peter’s; the letter U and a deer trippant implying, perhaps, the writer’s tender regard towards his correspondent. Date about the time of Henry V. or Henry VI.)
Inscription ring.
The annexed engraving (from the ‘Archæological Journal,’ March, 1848) represents a curious ring, the property of Mr. Fitch, and belonging to his interesting cabinet of Norfolk antiquities. It is a plain hoop of silver, of the size here seen, and bears the inscription ‘Ethraldric on Lynd.’ Its date has been assigned to as early a period as Saxon times, but we are inclined to attribute it to a subsequent age, the twelfth, or, perhaps, so late a date even as the thirteenth century. It may deserve notice that the mintage of London, of coins of Canute, Harold, Edward the Confessor, the Conqueror, and subsequent kings, is designated by the legend ‘On Lynde.’ This ring was found during the construction of the railway at Attleborough, in Norfolk.
True-love knots were common formerly. In the inventory of the effects of Henry Howard, K.G., Earl of Northampton, 1614, is mentioned ‘a golde ringe sett with fifteene diamondes in a true lover’s knotte, with the wordes nec astu, nec ense.’
In the Waterton Collection in the South Kensington Museum are some interesting specimens of this peculiar kind of ring of English and Italian workmanship.
At the commencement of the present century ‘Harlequin’ rings were fashionable in England. They were so called because they were set round with variously-coloured stones, in some way resembling the motley costume of the hero of pantomime.
‘Regard rings,’ of French origin, were common even to a late period, and were thus named from the initials with which they were set forming the acrostic of these words:[72]