The mourning-ring for King Charles II. bore the inscription ‘Chs. Rex.
Remem.--obiit--ber.: 6th Feb. 1685.’
In the Waterton Collection at the South Kensington Museum is a memorial
gold ring, with oval bezel set with crystal, beneath which is a crown with
the initials ‘C. R. K. B.’ in gold, over hair (Charles II. and Catharine
of Braganza). English. Date about 1685. Diameter, nine-tenths of an inch.
Devices illustrative of death have frequently formed the subjects of
mourning-rings. Among some antiquities found in Sussex, and exhibited at
the Society of Antiquaries in March 1866, was the fragment of a
mourning-ring set with a coffin-shaped crystal, on which was delicately
engraved a skeleton.
In the Braybrooke Collection is a gold ring of about the end of the
sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century, with a hexagonal
tablet, which is inlaid with a white stone engraved with a death’s-head;
round it on the gold are engraved the words ‘Dye to Live.’[68]
In the same collection is a ‘memento mori’ ring, of bronze, with a tablet
on the hoop, half an inch square, and edges serrated; a death’s-head is
engraved upon it with the above inscription. Rings with the same device
and words are alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in the ‘Chances:’
I’ll keep it as they keep death’s-heads in rings,
To cry ‘memento’ to me.
Rings engraved with skulls and skeletons were not, however, necessarily
mourning-rings, but were worn also by persons who affected gravity. Luther
wore a gold ring with a small death’s-head in enamel, which is now
preserved in Dresden (see ‘Remarkable Rings’). Biron, in ‘Love’s Labour’s
Lost,’ refers to ‘a death’s face in a ring.’
Mr. Fairholt describes a ring on which two figures of skeletons surround
the finger and support a small sarcophagus. The ring is of gold,
enamelled, the skeletons being made still more hideous by a covering of
white enamel. The lid of the sarcophagus is also enamelled, with a Maltese
cross in red on a black ground studded with gilt hearts. This lid is made
to slide off and display a very minute skeleton lying within
(Londesborough Collection).
In the ‘Recueil des Ouvrages d’Orfévrerie,’ by Gilles l’Egaré, published
in the early part of the reign of Louis XIV., is an unusually good design
for a mourning-ring with skull decorations.
In the Londesborough Collection is a fine specimen of a mourning-ring of
the early part of the last century.
[Illustration: Memorial and mortuary rings.]
In digging a grave in or near Ripon some years ago a sexton discovered an
ancient signet-ring, on which was engraved a dormouse coiled up in sleep,
with an inscription around it, in black-letter characters, ‘Wake me no
man.’ A similar ring is said to have been turned up in a churchyard near
Scarborough.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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