The following illustration represents a spiral silver ring, found at
Largo, weighing 120 grs. It is shaped, apparently, by the hammer. The
edges are serrated. A spiral ring found with Saxon remains in Kent,
engraved by Douglas in his ‘Nenia,’ and another found in the Isle of
Wight, represented in the ‘Winchester’ volume of the Archæological
Association, may be compared with the present example.
[Illustration: Spiral silver ring.]
Dr. Mantell has a massive gold ring, supposed to have been worn on the
finger, formed of two square bars rudely twisted together, and gradually
diminishing in size towards the extremities, where they are united
together. It was ploughed up at Bormer, in Sussex, and was presented to
Dr. Mantell by the Earl of Chichester. It is represented in Horsfield’s
‘History of Lewes,’ plate iv. Similar rings of this description, but
differing in the fashion of the twist, have been noticed as found in
Britain. The resemblance between these ornaments and the gold ‘ring-money’
of the interior of Africa is exceedingly curious.
[Illustration: Ring: Flodden Field.]
The annexed engraving (from the ‘Archæological Journal,’ vol. iii. p. 269)
represents a gold ring, belonging to Sir Noel Paton, F.S.A., Scotland,
reported to have been found on the field of Flodden: weight 8 dwts. 17
grs. Other rings of a similar form have been discovered, and ‘they appear
to offer some analogy with the torc of the Celtic age.’
The annexed illustration represents a remarkably fine ring engraved in
Chifflet’s ‘Anastasis Childerici’ (1655), on the same page as that of the
Childeric ring (described in the chapter on ‘Memorial and Mortuary
Rings’), for purposes of comparison, in carrying out his original theory,
that the supposed bees of Childeric were, by gradual transition, converted
into the figure known as the _fleur de lys_ of a later monarchy, as he
endeavours to illustrate by numerous diagrams, but he omits to say where
this ring marked ‘sapphirus’ was originally found. It is a mere
supposition that the figure represents St. Louis, but in Montfaucon’s
‘Monuments de la Monarchie Française’ (Paris, 1729), in a long
disquisition on the origin, &c., of the _fleur de lys_, on referring to
plate xxiii. tom. ii. p. 158, where St. Louis ‘instruit ses enfans,’ his
shield is noticed as bearing for the _first time three fleurs de lys_.
[Illustration]
Sandford, in his ‘Genealogical History’ (pp. 270, 289), says that Henry
the Fifth, being Prince of Wales, ‘did bear azure, 3 _flowers de lys or_,
for the Kingdom of France, reducing them from _semée_ to the number 3, as
did Charles VI., the present King.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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