By God alone we two are one. God’s blessing be on thee and me. Love me and be happy. The love is true I owe you. God did foresee we should agree. In God and thee my joy shall be. Absence tries love. Virtue surpasseth riches. Let virtue rest within thy breast. I lyke my choyce. As circles five by art compact shews but one ring in sight, So trust uniteth faithful mindes with knott of secret might; Whose force to breake no right but greedie death possesseth power, As time and sequels well shall prove. My ringe can say no more. (The Earl of Hertford’s wedding-ring consisted of five links, the four inner ones containing the above posies of the Earl’s making. See page 318, ‘Betrothal and Wedding Rings.’) Joye sans fyn. (Fourteenth century.) In ‘Manningham’s Diary,’ 1602-1603 (Camden Society), we have the following ‘Posies for a jet ring lined with sylver’: ‘“One two,” so written as you may begin with either word. “This one ring is two,” or both sylver and jet make but one ring; the body and soule one man; twoe friends one mynde. “Candida mens est,” the sylver resembling the soule, being the inner part. “Bell’ ame bell’ amy,” a fayre soule is a fayre frend, etc. “Yet faire within.” “The firmer the better,” the sylver the stronger and the better. “Mille modis læti miseros mors una fatigat.”’ Live as I or else I dye. Within thy brest my harte doth rest. (On two gold posy-rings found in Sussex, 1866.) In 1780 the sexton of Southwell, in digging a grave, found a gold ring weighing nine dwts. six grs. On the inside is the following inscription, in characters very distinct, deep, and not inelegantly cut: =+= MIEV + MOVRI + QUE + CHANGE + MA FOY +. The cross at the beginning is of the same size as the letters, that between the words very small. You dear! (The meaning is thus conjectured of, possibly, a rebus, or canting device, on a silver signet-ring, found in the bed of the river Nene, at Wisbeach St. Peter’s; the letter U and a deer trippant implying, perhaps, the writer’s tender regard towards his correspondent. Date about the time of Henry V. or Henry VI.) [Illustration: Inscription ring.] The annexed engraving (from the ‘Archæological Journal,’ March, 1848) represents a curious ring, the property of Mr. Fitch, and belonging to his interesting cabinet of Norfolk antiquities. It is a plain hoop of silver, of the size here seen, and bears the inscription ‘ETHRALDRIC ON LYND.’ Its date has been assigned to as early a period as Saxon times, but we are inclined to attribute it to a subsequent age, the twelfth, or, perhaps, so late a date even as the thirteenth century. It may deserve notice that the mintage of London, of coins of Canute, Harold, Edward the Confessor, the Conqueror, and subsequent kings, is designated by the legend ‘ON LYNDE.’ This ring was found during the construction of the railway at Attleborough, in Norfolk.