Henry the Fourth, Emperor of Germany, was cruelly treated by his son, who conspired against him, and forced him to abdicate the throne. The degraded emperor is said to have been reduced by famine to such extremities that he ate the leather of his boots for hunger. He sent his ring and sword as his last token of forgiveness to his rebel son, with the simple and touching message: ‘If thou hadst left me more, I would have sent more to thee.’ Thomas Chester, a writer for the minstrels in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and who is stated to have translated the ‘Erle of Tolouse,’ a metrical romance, relates that an Earl of this house, disguised in pilgrim’s weeds, asked alms of the empress, consort of Diocletian, Emperor of Germany, to whom his secret is known, and who gives him forty florins and a ring. He receives the latter present with the greatest satisfaction, and, although obliged to return home, comforts himself with this reflection:-- Well is me I have thy grace Of the to hav thys thyng, If ever I hav grace of the That any love between us be This may be a tokenyng. The empress, on the false accusation of two knights, is thrown into prison. The Earl of Toulouse, disguised as a monk, obtains permission to act as her confessor; the empress, not knowing him in his present disguise, confesses that she once gave a ring to the ‘Erle.’ On this he challenges the two knights, and, of course, overcomes them in combat. On the death of the emperor he marries the empress. This story reminds us of the lines in ‘Marmion,’ by Sir Walter Scott:-- The fair Queen of France Sent him a turquoise ring and glove, And charged him as her knight and love For her to break a lance: a fatal gift, as Flodden Field proved.[65] In the ‘Lays’ of Marie, the Princess Guilliadun, having fallen in love with Sir Eliduc, sends him as tokens a ring and a rich girdle. In the ‘Lyfe of Ipomydon,’ the manuscript of which is in the Harleian Collection at the British Museum, the queen gives her son a ring-token:-- It befell upon a day, The queen to her son gan say, In privitie and in counsail, ‘Thou hast a brother withouten fail, Privily gotten me upon, Ere I was wedded to any mon. But hastily he was done fro me, I ne wot if he alive be, And he me sent, this ender (last) year, A rich ring of gold full clear; An ever he any brother had, That I should give it him, he bade; That where he come, among high or low, By that ring he should him know. Than take this ring, my son, of me: In what country that he be, Who that knoweth this ilke ring, He is thy brother without lesing.’ Ipomydon accepts the ring, and promises to spare no pains in searching for its original proprietor, who, after various adventures, is found in the person of Sir Campanys, with whom he has an encounter, during which the latter discovers his mother’s ring on the finger of Ipomydon.