The further history of the ring may be gleaned from several sources, but notably from a MS. by one Richard Sporley, a monk of the abbey, entitled, ‘De fundacione ecclesie Westm’, dated A.D. 1450, and now in the British Museum.[221]

St. Edward’s ring was deposited with his corpse in the tomb in A.D. 1066. He was translated at midnight of October 13, 1163, when his body was found to be incorrupt. Abbot Lawrence took the robes from the body and made them into three copes, and gave the ring as a sacred relic to the Abbey:

‘Dompnus Laurentius quondam abbas huius loci ... sed et annulo eiusdem (Sancti Edwardi) quem Sancto Iohanni quondam tradidit, quem et ipse de paradiso remisit, elapsis annis duobus et dimidio, postea in nocte translationis de digito regis tulit, et pro miraculo in loco isto custodiri iussit.’

From CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MS. Ec. iii. 59

Plate XXXIX. MIRACLES AT THE TOMB OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
XIIIth Century

The story of the ring is also depicted in the miniatures of a beautiful illuminated Norman-French MS. Life of St. Edward the King, dating from the thirteenth century, and now in the University Library at Cambridge.[222] The single miniature reproduced here (Plate XXXIX) shows seven blind men, restored to sight, kneeling at the shrine, while a priest reads the Te Deum. At the sides of the shrine are figures on pillars of St. John as the palmer (left), and St. Edward with his ring (right). No cure of epilepsy, so-called cramp, is depicted among the many miraculous cures recorded in the MS. The earliest extant records of the use of the ring for this purpose date from the reign of Edward II.

Anstis[223] cites the following entry from the last chapter of the Constitutions of the Household of Edward II: ‘Item le Roi doit offrer de certein le jour de grant vendredi a crouce. v s. queux il est acustumez receivre devers lui a la mene le chapelein afair ent anulx a donner pur medicine az divers gentz’: the language, however, of the entry leaves little room to doubt that the custom was already an established one. At his coronation, too, Edward II offered a pound of gold wrought into a figure representing St. Edward holding a ring, and a mark of gold, or eight ounces, worked into the figure of a pilgrim putting forth his hand to receive the ring: and the presumption is that this gold was to be converted into cramp-​rings.

We have detailed accounts of the manner of this ceremony of hallowing cramp-​rings dating from early Tudor times, and there is sufficient evidence in the brief notices of earlier date to show that the ceremonial observed by the Plantagenet kings was essentially similar. On Good Friday, when the king went to adore the cross, he used to make an offering of money, which was redeemed by a sum of equivalent value: the money so received was converted into rings, which were subsequently hallowed by the king. In Tudor times the hallowing of the rings took place on Good Friday, so that the offering of the money must have been made at some previous time, or this part of the ritual may have actually become obsolete. The change of custom was effected some time between 9 Edward IV (1470–1) and 13 Henry VIII (1521–2), and was probably therefore the work of Henry VII, who, as we know, materially altered the kindred ceremonial of Touching for the Evil.

A MS. copy of the Orders of the King of England’s Household, 13 Henry VIII, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris,[224] contains, ‘The Order of the Kynge, on Good Friday, touching the cominge to Service, Hallowinge of the Crampe Rings, and Offeringe and Creepinge to the Crosse’. It is quoted in extenso in the Northumberland Household Book,[225] and also by Mansell in his Monumenta Ritualia.[226] It runs as follows: