In the collection of Earl Beauchamp is a gold ring with enamel portrait of the Regent Orleans, by Petitot; French, beginning of the eighteenth century. Also a gold ring with profile portrait of Frederic the Great; and another portrait within; eighteenth century.
Belonging to the Rev. J. C. Jackson is a gold ring set with intaglio, an emerald portrait of James II.; eighteenth century; formerly the property of Cardinal York. A gold ring, black enamelled, with miniature portrait of Prince Charles Edward; eighteenth century.
A ring with a portrait head of Queen Elizabeth (?) in carved jacinth, mounted in gold, set with brilliants; French, sixteenth century, the property of George Bonnor, Esq.
Till, in his account of ‘Coronation Medals,’ mentions (but without citing his authority) that the late Cardinal of York wore constantly, till his decease, a ring which bore the portraits of the Pretender, James the Third, and his wife; it was taken from his finger in the hour of his dissolution, by his servant, and sold as a perquisite—a relic of the instability and mutation of human greatness—to William, Baron Bartholdy, son to the Jewish Plato, Moses Mendelssohn. It is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, to which it was presented by Mrs. Maria Graham (since Calcott), in 1824.
APPENDIX.
CHAPTER I.
RINGS FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD. [P. 18].