In 1482 Cardinal d’Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen, was buried with great magnificence at Rome, where he died. The body of the prelate was arrayed in the richest robes of cloth of gold, and his fingers were covered with rings of the greatest rarity and beauty. The brilliancy of the jewels (observes Dom Pommeraye in his ‘Lives of the Archbishops of Rouen’) excited the cupidity of the canons of St. Mary Major at Rome, where he was interred, insomuch that they threw themselves on the body, and struggled with each other to get at the rings. The monks of St. Augustine, who also attended on this occasion, pretended to be highly scandalized at this profanation--‘peut-être,’ however, ‘pour avoir part au butin’--and attempted on their part to seize the rings. In this unclerical skirmish the body of the archbishop was entirely stripped of its gorgeous trappings, and left naked, a piteous spectacle. Matthew Paris informs us that archbishops, bishops, and abbots, with other principals of the clergy, were buried in their pontificalibus; thus ‘they prepared the body of Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the burial, closing him in his robes, with his face uncovered, and a mitre put on his head, with gloves upon his hands, _a ring on his finger_, and all the other ornaments belonging to his office.’ In describing the finger-ring found in the grave of the Venerable Bede, the writer of a brief account of Durham Cathedral adds: ‘No priest during the reign of Catholicity was buried or enshrined without his ring.’ The practice may have prevailed generally, as many instances of rings recovered from the graves of ecclesiastics show, but it was more particularly the usage of prelates. Martene (‘De Antiquis Ecclesiæ Ritibus’) remarks: ‘Episcopus debet habere annulum, quia sponsus est. Cæteri sacerdotes non, quia sponsi non sunt, sed amici sponsi, vel vicarii.’ The bones of St. Dunstan were discovered in the time of William, fortieth abbot of Glastonbury: a ring was on the finger-bone of this saint. William, the twenty-second abbot of St. Alban’s Abbey, who died in 1235, was buried in pontifical habits ‘with a ring on his finger.’ Richard de Gerbery, forty-fifth Bishop of Amiens, in the thirteenth century, died in 1210, and was buried in the cathedral, in pontificalibus, with mitre, ring, and ivory cross. When the body of St. John of Beverley (died 721) was translated into a new shrine, about the year 1037, a ring, among other articles, was found in his coffin. We have a much earlier instance cited by Aringhi, that the ring of St Caius (283-296) was found in his tomb: ‘intra sepulchrum tria Diocletiani Imperatoris numismata, sub quo coronatus fuerat, et Sanctissimi Pontificis annulus adinventatus est.’ A gold ring was found in the tomb of St. Birinus, Bishop of Dorchester, who died in 640.