Come to be married to my lady’s woman, After she’s crack’d in the ring. The abuse of the rush ring led to the practice being strictly prohibited by the constitutions of Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury, in 1217; but it had a long continuance. Quarles, in ‘Shepheard’s Oracles’ (1646), writes:-- And while they sport and dance, the love-sick swains Compose rush rings and myrtleberry chains. In Greene’s ‘Menaphon’ we find:--‘’Twas a good world when such simplicitie was used, saye the olde women of our time, when a ring of a rush would tye as much love together as a gimmon of gold.’ The practice of the rush ring in France prevailed for a considerable period. Another equivocal pretence for engagement was the ring of St. Martin,[56] so named from the extensive franchises and immunities granted to the inhabitants of the precincts of the Collegiate Church of St. Martin’s-le-Grand. In a rare tract, entitled ‘The Compter’s Commonwealth’ (1617), is an allusion to these rings, which shows their import: ‘This kindnesse is but like alchimie, or _Saint Martin’s rings_, that are faire to the eye and have a rich outside, but if a man should break them asunder and looke into them, they are nothing but brasse and copper.’ In ‘Whimsies, or a New Cast of Character’ (1631), mention is made of St. Martin’s rings and counterfeit bracelets as ‘commodities of infinite consequence. They will passe for current at a May-pole, and purchase a favour from their May-Marian.’ So also in ‘Plaine Percevall, the Peace-maker of England’: ‘I doubt whether all be gold that glistereth, sith St. Martin’s rings be but copper within, though they be gilt without, sayes the goldsmith.’ The materials of which wedding-rings have been made are numerous; besides the various metals, we have an instance of a leather ring made on the spur of the moment out of a piece of kid cut from the bride’s glove. As a substitute for the usual ring, the church key has been put into requisition. Horace Walpole, in a letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Mann, dated July 27, 1752, alludes to the use of a curtain-ring for this purpose: ‘The event which has made most noise since my last is the extensive wedding of the youngest of the two Gunnings,’ and he then describes an assembly at Lord Chesterfield’s, when the Duke of Hamilton made love to Miss Gunning, and two nights after sent for a parson to perform the marriage ceremony. The Doctor refused to act without a licence and a ring. ‘The Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop; at last they were married with a ring of the bed-curtain, at half-an-hour past twelve at night, at May Fair Chapel.’