All this while certain superstitions existed with regard to the necklace, as well as to all other trinkets of which gold and precious stones made part, occasioned, probably, by the antique use of gems as amulets, and from the pretended occult powers ascribed to them by the alchemists. Even Elizabeth, with all her keenness and masculine strength of mind, save where vanity and its natural craving, the love of admiration, were concerned, appears to have been just as impressible upon such subjects as a peasant girl; and we find the Lord Chancellor Hatton sending her a ring (in all probability of agate), to be worn on her breast, against infectious air. The physicians of those days did much to sustain the "charm" of our subject. Necklaces made of the root of the male peony were worn for the prevention of the falling sickness, while those made of amber were deemed good against infection; and to the doctrine of signatures, which connected the medical properties of substances with their forms and color, we may safely trace the common practice of ornamenting young children with necklaces of coral, as well as the invention of the silver-belled trifle, so called.
With the same purpose (that of assisting their teething), the anodyne necklace, which is made of beads of the white bryony, is sometimes hung around the necks of infants, sustaining, even in our own times, a lingering faith in the medical virtues of the amulet.
But that our space forbids, the necklace worn by nuns might lead us to a dissertation on the religious uses of this ornament; but we must briefly glance at its secular history in modern times, when its most powerful spells have been those of fashion.
Coming down to the seventeenth century, we find the necklace quite as much in vogue as in the reign of Elizabeth: in Massinger's "City Madam," after her husband's knighthood, we find her brother observing to the lady,
"Your borrowed hair,
Powdered and curled, was by your dresser's art
Formed like a coronet—hang'd with diamonds,
And richest orient pearls—your carkanet,
That did adorn your neck, of equal value;"
so that the love of gems and jewellery was by no means on the decline. In the picture of Charles and his queen, in "Heath's Chronicle," (1662), Catherine of Braganza wears two necklaces, one clasping the throat, and the other, to which a pendent is attached, falling low on the shoulders. Planché tells us that in Mary's reign, jewelled necklaces sparkled on the bosom, a fashion continued in that of her sister Anne of Denmark, who is usually drawn wearing one.