Instances are recorded in which the wearing of a ring has been the means of saving life. Such happened to the Count de St. Pol at the battle of Pavia. He had fallen covered with wounds; avarice recalled him to life. A soldier, seeking for pillage, arrived at the place where the unfortunate Count lay extended, senseless, among the dead. He perceived a very beautiful diamond glitter on the finger of the apparently lifeless man. Not being successful in drawing the ring off, he began to cut the finger. The pain extorted a piercing cry from the Count, who had only swooned. He mentioned his name, and had the presence of mind to recommend silence to the soldier, telling him that if he boasted of having in his power a prince of the house of France, the Emperor’s generals would take him into their own hands in order to get his ransom; and he promised to make the soldier’s fortune if he would take care of his wounds, and follow him to France. This reasoning had its effect; the soldier secretly conveyed the Prince to Pavia, had his wounds dressed, and was nobly rewarded for it.
Taylor, in his ‘Danger of Premature Interments’ (1816) relates the following incident. The heroine of this event was named Retchmuth Adolet. She was the wife of a merchant at Cologne, and is said to have died of the plague, which destroyed a great part of the inhabitants of that city in 1571. She was speedily interred, and a ring of great value was suffered to remain on her finger, which tempted the cupidity of the grave-digger. The night was the time he had planned for obtaining possession of it. On going to the grave, opening it, and attempting to take the ring from off the finger of the lady, she came to herself, and so terrified the sacrilegious thief, that he ran away and left his lantern behind him. The lady took advantage of his fright, and with the assistance of his lantern, found her way home, and lived to be the mother of three children. After her real decease, she was buried near the door of the same church, and a tomb was erected over her grave, upon which the incident related was engraved.
Mrs. Bray, in a notice of ‘Cotele,’ and ‘the Edgcumbes of the Olden Time’ (‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ November 1853), relates a singular circumstance of this character, which ‘is so well authenticated, that not even a doubt rests upon its truth.’ It refers to the mother of that Sir Richard Edgcumbe, Knight, who, in 1748, was created Baron of Mount Edgcumbe.
‘The family were residing at Cotele (I do not know the date of the year), when Lady Edgcumbe became much indisposed, and to all appearance died. How long after is not stated, but her body was deposited in the family vault of the parish church. The interment had not long taken place, before the sexton (who must have heard from the nurse or servants that she was buried with something of value upon her) went down into the vault at midnight, and contrived to force open the coffin. A gold ring was on her ladyship’s finger, which in a hurried way he attempted to draw off, but, not readily succeeding, he pressed with great violence the finger. Upon this the body moved in the coffin, and such was the terror of the man, that he ran away as fast as he could, leaving his lantern behind him. Lady Edgcumbe arose, astonished at finding herself dressed in grave-clothes, and numbered with the tenants of the vault. She took up the lantern, and proceeded at once to the mansion of Cotele. The terror, followed by the rejoicing of her family and household, which such a resurrection from the tomb occasioned, may well be conceived. Exactly five years after this circumstance, she became the mother of that Sir Richard Edgcumbe, who was created Baron. Polwhele, in his “History of Cornwall,” says: “Of the authenticity of this event there can be no reasonable doubt. A few years ago a gentleman of my acquaintance heard all the particulars of the transaction from the late Lord Graves, of Thancks, which is in the neighbourhood of Cotele. But I need not appeal to Lord Graves’s authority, as I recollect the narrative as coming from the lips of my grandmother Polwhele, who used to render the story extremely interesting from a variety of minute circumstances, and who, from her connexion and intimacy of her own with the Edgcumbe family, was unquestionably well-informed on the subject.”
‘It may seem strange that when Lady Edgcumbe was thus committed to the grave she was not buried in lead; but at the period of her supposed death it was very unusual to bury persons, even of high rank and station, in a leaden coffin, if they died and were buried in the country. The nearest town to Cotele of any note was Plymouth, a seaport to which there was then no regular road from the far-distant old mansion, and I question if at that period Plymouth could have furnished such an unusual thing as a lead coffin. Lady Edgcumbe was probably buried in oak secured by nails or screws, which without much difficulty could be forced open by the sexton in his meditated robbery of the body.’
While rings have favoured the living, they have also been the means of recognising the dead. An instance of this is related in the history of the great Duke of Burgundy, renowned for the splendour of his court and his love of jewels. He died in the battle of Nanci, and his body was not found until three days afterwards, when it was recognised by one of the Duke’s household by a ring and other precious jewels upon it; otherwise the corpse was so disfigured that it could not have been identified.
The body of the great naval commander Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was shipwrecked on the rocks of Scilly in 1707, was washed on shore, when some fishermen, it is said, having stolen a valuable emerald ring, buried the corpse. The ring, being shown about, made a great noise over the island, and was the cause of the discovery and ultimate removal of the body to Westminster Abbey.
Another account is that which was published under the authority of the Earl of Romney, grandson of Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Some years after the fatal shipwreck, an aged woman confessed to the parish minister of St. Mary’s on her deathbed that, exhausted with fatigue, one man who had survived the disaster reached her hut, and that she had murdered him to secure the valuable property on his person. This worst of wreckers then produced a ring taken from the finger of her victim, and it was afterwards identified as one presented to Sir Cloudesley Shovel by Lord Berkeley.
William Trotter, of an ancient family on the Scottish border, is recorded to have fallen at the battle of Flodden; and, in corroboration of the fact, a gold ring was found about the middle of the last century, upon the site of the field of battle, bearing an inscription in Norman-French, having between each word a boar’s head, the armorial bearings of the Trotters.
Martius, in ‘Titus Andronicus,’ when he falls into a dark pit, discovers the body of Bassianus, by the light of the jewel on the dead man’s hand:—