Miss Agnes Strickland, in her ‘Lives of the Four Princesses of the Royal
House of Stuart,’ mentions a circumstance in the life of the Princess
Henrietta Anne (1670), that, ‘as Bossuet was kneeling by her bedside, she
suddenly turned to one of her ladies and spoke to her in English, which
the Bishop did not understand, to tell her that when she should have
entered into her rest, she was to give Bossuet the emerald ring which had
been ordered to be made for him as a memorial of her.’
Izaak Walton added a codicil to his will (1683) for the distribution of
memorial rings to several of his relations and friends, with the motto, ‘A
friend’s farewell. I. W., obiit;’ the value of the rings to be thirteen
shillings and fourpence each. In the will itself he gives to his
son-in-law, Dr. Hawkins, ‘whom I love as my own son;’ to his daughter, his
wife, and his son Izaak, a ring to each of them, with the motto, ‘Love my
memory. I. W., obiit.’ To the Lord Bishop of Winchester a ring, with the
motto, ‘A mite for a million. I. W., obiit.’
In a codicil of the last testament of Nell Gwyn (1687) she requests that
Lady Fairborne may have fifty pounds given to her to buy a ring.
Dr. John Spencer, Master of Corpus Christi College, in his will (1693)
left twenty shillings to each of the Fellows of his college for a funeral
ring.
Queen Elizabeth, eldest daughter to James the First, wore to the day of
her death a mourning ring, in which was a lock of her brother’s hair,
brought over to Bohemia by a faithful servant, with the device of a crown
over a skull and cross-bones, and the letters ‘C. R.’ After her death, in
1662, it was much prized by her descendants, and was long a heirloom among
them.
On the eve of the death of Henrietta Anne, the daughter of Charles the
First, she sent most tender messages to her brothers King Charles the
Second, and James, Duke of York; and, drawing from her finger a ring, she
expressed a wish that it might be sent to the former, as a memorial of her
dying love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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