There is historic record of two memorial rings, one set with an emerald and the other with a sapphire, the gifts of two unhappy royal personages made shortly before death. The first of these rings was bestowed upon the great French preacher Bossuet by the Stuart princess Henrietta Anne, who, on her death-bed, directed that after she had gone to rest there should be given to Bossuet “the emerald ring she had ordered to be made for him.” Of the second ring, that set with a sapphire, we learn that shortly before her execution in 1587, the unfortunate Mary of Scotland took it from her finger and sent it to her faithful follower, Lord John Hamilton, in whose family it has since then been passed down from generation to generation as a priceless heirloom.[79]
Several memorial or mourning rings are among the treasures of the Figdor Collection in Vienna. One of these is of massive silver and has the Old French inscription: “dort couat,” (rest in peace); it was found at Huy, near Statte, Belgium, and represents work of the fifteenth century. Another is of enamelled gold, and is evidently for a woman’s wear. The inscription is: “R. C. Not lost but gone before,” in gilt letters on a white enamel ground. This is an English ring of about 1800. A German ring of the eighteenth century has its head formed in the shape of a coffin, on which are skull and cross-bones; on its sides is the inscription: “Hir ist Ruhe,” (Here is rest). When the lid is lifted, a heart is disclosed in the coffin.[80]
Memento mori rings, bearing a death’s head, were sometimes left as legacies. Such was the “golde ringe with a deathe’s head” bequeathed by Thomasin Heath to her sister in 1596, “for a remembrance of my good will.” Shakespeare wrote in his Love’s Labour’s Lost (Act V, sc. 2) of “a Death’s face in a ring,” where poor, pedantic Holofernes’ countenance is made the subject of mockery. A rather unaccountable circumstance is that such rings are asserted to have been worn, toward the end of the sixteenth century, by professional “ladies light o’ love,” if we can safely generalize from a passage in Marston’s “Dutch Courtezan.”[81]
The ruthless executions carried out after the suppression of the last Jacobite revolt in 1745, are memorialized in a ring of the period. This is of gold, the inscriptions being defined by a white enamel background. On the panel-shaped bezel are the letters B. D. L. K., the initials of the Jacobite lords, Balmerino, Kilmarnock (exec. Aug. 18, 1746), Deruentwater (exec. Dec. 8, 1746), and Lovat (exec. April 9, 1747), and the dates 8, DEC. 9, AP. 18, AU; in the middle is an axe and the date 1746. The initials of seventeen of these lords’ followers, executed on Kensington Common in the same year, are marked on the hoop of the ring.[82]
In the possession of Waldo Lincoln, of Worcester, Mass., is a memorial ring consisting of a narrow plain gold band. There is faintly discernible on this a winged head, apparently a skull, similar to the heads of this type sometimes to be seen sculptured on old gravestones. Around the inner side of the band runs the following inscription: “Hoble I. Winslow Esqr., ob. 14 Decr. 1738 Æ 68.”[83] This refers to Isaac Winslow, a son of the noted Josiah Winslow (1629–1680), governor of Plymouth Colony from 1673 until his death, and who was the first native-born governor in New England. It was during his term of office that the severe contest with the Indians, known as King Philip’s War, was fought out successfully.
A mourning ring with a strangely materialistic motto is that executed by order of the Beefsteak Club to commemorate the demise of John Thornhill, Esq., on September 23, 1757, according to the inscription in white enamel on the hoop. The bezel is flat and of oval form, enamelled in pale blue and white; in the centre is shown a gridiron and around this is the legend: “Beef and Liberty.”[84] The Beefsteak Club, formed early in the eighteenth century, was Tory in politics, an opponent of the Kit-Cat Club, whose members were devoted to the success of the Whigs.
Rings as memorials of the dead suggest the mention of a memorial ring of another kind, one destined to favor the revival of a defunct government. When Napoleon I was exiled to Elba after the overthrow of his empire and the restoration of the Bourbons, many of his faithful followers clung to the hope that he would return and re-establish his rule in France. In order to aid in keeping this hope alive, a number of rings were made which could be worn with impunity, but which could also serve when desired as proofs of the wearers’ attachment to the Napoleonic cause. One of these is described as a gold ring on which a minute gold and enamel coffin was set; on pressing a spring at the side of the ring a section of the circlet sprang up and revealed a tiny figure of Napoleon executed in enamel.[85]
At the English Bar, the usage long existed that certain chosen barristers should be given the title and superior rank of serjeants. In important cases, a serjeant was usually retained as principal manager and chief representative at the trial, and generally made the statement of the case in court, while one or more ordinary barristers got up the evidence and aided in the examination of witnesses; no serjeants have been appointed since 1868. As with almost all the stages of an English law-student’s and barrister’s progress, heavy expenses had to be born by the new serjeant, as he was expected not only to give a splendid dinner, or rather a series of dinners lasting for a week, to all who were closely or distantly related to his preferment, but to bestow a gold ring upon each one of the numerous guests, these “serjeant rings” varying in elegance and value according to the rank of the recipient.
So strictly was this purely traditional custom construed that a close watch was kept to prevent any cheapening of the quality or intrinsic value of these obligatory rings. As it had been laid down by a leading authority that the ring to be given to a chief justice, or “chief baron,” must have the weight of twenty shillings’ worth of gold, a formal protest was made on one occasion, when rings weighing a tenth less than this had been bestowed, not, as Lord Chief Justice Kelynge told the newly appointed serjeants, because of the money value, but “that it might not be drawn into a precedent.”[86] The average cost of one of these bestowals of rings has been estimated at about £40 ($200).
The first definite notice of the bestowal of serjeants’ rings comes from the later years of Elizabeth’s reign, although the usage is believed to date back at least as far as the time of Henry VI (1422–1461). The Latin motto on a ring of Sir John Fineux, called in 1485, is “Suæ quisque fortunæ faber,” or “Every man is the artizan of his own fortune.” The mottoes engraved on these rings have varied from reign to reign. One of Elizabeth’s time bears “Lex regis præsidium” (The Law is the stronghold of the King); under Charles II the motto was “Adest Carolus magnus” (Charles the Great is with us). Much more dignified and telling is the motto in James II’s reign, “Deus, lex, rex” (God, the Law, the King), implying that God is the source of the law, and that the law is above kings. As to the heavy tax sometimes imposed upon a new barrister’s pecuniary resources, it is stated that on one occasion 1409 rings were given at an expense of £773 ($3865). The usage, though maintained to a considerable extent, became somewhat less oppressive toward the end of the eighteenth century, but even in 1856 rings were given, some of them bearing the motto “Cedant arma togæ” (Arms will give place to the Gown) in allusion to the approaching peace with Russia after the Crimean War.[87]