Evil portents with regard to rings prevailed in the reign of Elizabeth. The queen’s coronation-ring, which she had worn constantly since her inauguration, having grown into her finger, necessitated the ring being filed off, and this was regarded as an unfavourable augury by many, who, doubtless, attributed any untoward event that occurred at this period to an omen. Few were more credulous in such matters than the strong-minded (in most respects) queen herself, who was a firm believer in the still popular superstition of ‘good luck.’ Long after this period, however, there were not wanting believers in the supernatural efficacy of charmed rings; there was even a charge against the Puritans of having contributed to foster the popular delusion. In the ‘Scourge,’ a series of weekly papers which appeared between 1717 and 1718, alluding to May 29, the writer says of the Roundheads: ‘Yet these priests of Baal had so poisoned the minds of the populace with such delusive enchantments that from rings, bodkins, and thimbles, like the Israelitish calf of gold, would start up a troop of horse to reinforce the saints.’ Even to a comparatively late period the belief in the Gnostic amulets was current in our own country. Immediately after the battle of Culloden the baggage of Prince Charles Edward fell into the hands of the Duke of Cumberland’s army, and many private and curious articles came into the possession of General Belford--amongst others a stone set in silver attached to a ring, which probably the superstitious Prince may have obtained on the Continent as a charm, and carried it as a protection in the hazardous enterprise in which he was engaged. It was a ruby blood-stone, having on one face the figure of Mars, with the inscription beside it, I A _w_. On the other face was a female naked figure, probably Isis, with the inscription, A T I T A. The ancient superstition of securing the favour of the great by wearing certain precious stones appears in the East by the aid of a talismanic ring--simply, however, of silver, without the assistance of a jewel. In Herbelot’s ‘Customs of the Mussulmans of India’ a formula is given for the making of these rings: ‘Should anyone desire to make princes and grandees subject and obedient to his will he must have a silver ring made, with a small square tablet fixed on it, upon which is to be engraved the number that the letters composing the _ism_ represent, which in this case is 2.613. This number by itself, or added to that of its two demons, 286 and 112, and its genius, 1,811--amounting in all to 4,822--must be formed into a magic square of the _solacee_ or _robace_ kind, and engraved. When the ring is thus finished, he is, for a week, to place it before him, and daily, in the morning and in the evening, to repeat the _ism_ five thousand times, and blow on it. When the whole is concluded he is to wear the ring on the little finger of the right hand.’