There are even earlier bequests than this of healing-rings,[237] but not specifically termed cramp-rings: they are simply spoken of as ‘vertuosi’. Thus Thomas de Hoton, rector of Kyrkebymisperton, in 1351, bequeathed to his chaplain ‘j. zonam de serico, j. bonam bursam, j. firmaculum, et j. anulum vertuosum. Item, domino Thome de Bouthum j. par de bedes de corall, j. anulum vertuosum.’ Talismanic rings, inscribed with the names of the three Magi, Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar, were used as preservatives from epilepsy in Plantagenet times.
The royal cramp-rings enjoyed no monopoly in the cure of epilepsy, as is shown by an extract from a medical treatise written in the fourteenth century:[238]
‘For the Crampe. Tak and ger gedine on Gude Friday, at fyfe parriche kirkes, fife of the first penyes that is offerd at the crosse, of ilk a kirk the first penye: than tak them al and ga before the crosse and say V. pater nosters in the worschip of fife wondes, and bere thaim on the V. dais, and say ilk a day als mekyl on the same wyse: and then gar mak a ryng thar of with owten alay of other metel, and writ with in Jasper, Batasar, Altrapa, and writ with outen Ih’ c. nazarenus; and sithen tak it fra the goldsmyth upon a Fridai, and say V. pater nosters als thu did before and use it alway afterward.’
The ‘fife wondes’ are, of course, the five wounds of the crucified Jesus.
A silver ring, made of five sixpences contributed by five different bachelors, conveyed by a bachelor to the hand of a smith that was also a bachelor, was another reputed remedy for epilepsy; and its virtue was enhanced, if none of the bachelors knew for what purpose or to whom it was given.[239]
In Berkshire, rings made from a piece of silver collected at the Communion found favour, and they were more efficacious if collected on Easter Sunday. Devonshire preferred a ring made of three nails or screws that had been used to fasten a coffin, and that had been dug out of a churchyard.[240]
Cramp-rings hallowed by the King of England enjoyed repute beyond the shores of England.[241] Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart, when ambassador to Charles V, writing to ‘my Lorde Cardinall’s grace from Saragoza, the xxi daie of June, 1510’, says: ‘If your grace remember me with some crampe rynges ye shall do a thynge muche looked for, and I trust to bestow thaym well, with Godd’s grace, who evermor preserve and encrease your moste reverent astate.’ Among various charms that Charles V carried about with him were ‘gold rings from England against cramp’.[242]
In A.D. 1518 we find the President of the College of Physicians lending his patronage to the royal cramp-rings. In a letter to the Parisian scholar, Guillaume Budé,[243] Thomas Linacre writes that he ‘has sent him some rings consecrated by the King as a charm against Spasms’: and on July 10, 1518, Budé replies to him from Paris that he has ‘received his letter with the rings on July 6’, and has distributed among the wives of his relatives and friends the eighteen rings of silver and one of gold he received from Linacre, telling them that they were amulets against slander and calumny.
Even the hard-headed Scot was not proof against the magnetism of the royal rings. A letter from Dr. Thomas Magnus, Warden of Sibthorpe College, Nottinghamshire, to Cardinal Wolsey,[244] written in A.D. 1526 says: