The romantic story of the Queen visiting the Countess of Nottingham, who had kept back the ring; of her shaking her on her death-bed, and crying out bitterly ‘that God might forgive, but she could not,’ is somewhat credited as documents come to light. In Birch’s ‘Memoirs of the Peers of England during the Reign of James the First,’ this story is given, as having been repeatedly told by Lady Elizabeth Spelman, great-granddaughter of Sir Robert Carey. The Queen is said to have been so hurt by this revelation of Lady Nottingham that she never went to bed, nor took any sustenance from that period. ‘In confirmation of the time of the Countess’s death,’ says Birch, ‘it appears from the parish register of Chelsea that she died at Arundel House, London, February 25, and was buried the 28th, 1603. Her funeral was kept at Chelsea, March 21st following, and Queen Elizabeth died three days afterwards.’ The celebrated ring on which the life of the Earl of Essex is thus said to have depended has been claimed by various persons. In ‘Old England’ (vol. ii. p. 74) a story is told that when, in 1564, Mary, Queen of Scots, married Darnley, she sent to her fair cousin of England a diamond-ring in the form of a heart, in token of the event and her own affection. The ring was accompanied by some Latin verses by Buchanan, thus translated:-- This gem behold, the emblem of my heart, From which my cousin’s image ne’er shall part; Clear in its lustre, spotless does it shine, ’Tis clear and spotless as this heart of mine. What though the stone a greater hardness wears, Superior firmness still the figure bears. ‘According’ (observes the editor of ‘Old England’) ‘to information which has been communicated to us, with an implicit faith on the part of our informants, that was the ring presented by Elizabeth to Essex, as being the most precious it was in her power to give him.’ Another account says that Mr. Thomas Penning, of the Exchequer, had, in 1781, a purse and ring by bequest from Mr. Sotheby, whose sister he married, and who was related to the late Mrs. Cooke, by long succession and inheritance from Sir Anthony Cooke, of Giddy Hall, Essex, preceptor of Edward the Sixth, and to whose family, according to tradition, these precious objects were given by Queen Elizabeth. The ring was of gold, with the Queen’s bust in bas-relief on a garnet, dressed as in her sixpenny and threepenny pieces of 1574, with the same features round it in the garter with the motto, and fastened with a buckle composed of two diamonds, and the strap turned by another. Over the bust was the crown, composed of twelve diamonds, and on each side the collet three diamonds. On the inner surface, immediately under the bust, was the union rose. [Illustration: The ‘Devereux’ Ring.]