A ruby ring is described as the ‘Charter of Poynings,’ in the will of Sir Michael de Poynings, in 1386. Poynings, in the neighbourhood of Brighton, was the seat of this ancient family from a period soon after the Conquest till the year 1446, when the barony, owing to the marriage of the heiress, merged into the earldom of Northumberland, and became extinct in 1679. Michael de Poynings, a banneret under Edward III. at the battle of Crecy, amongst other grants, left to his heir the ruby ring ‘which is the charter of my heritage of Poynings.’ This ruby ring of inheritance, the charter of the ‘Sires of Ponynges,’ came into possession of his son Thomas, and then to his second son Richard. According to tradition the famous Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Devon, in the reign of Henry III., settled the boundaries of certain disputed parishes by flinging her ring into a marsh, hence called ‘Ring in the Mire.’ So late as the sixteenth century the conveyance of property by means of a ring may be remarked in the following passage or item in the will of Anne Barrett, of Bury, dated 1504, ‘My maryeng ryng wt. all thynggs thereon.’ It is worthy of note that among the numerous kinds of evidence allowed in courts of law to establish a pedigree, engravings on rings are admitted upon the presumption that a person would not wear a ring with an error upon it.[47] John O’Molony, Bishop of Limerick in 1687, who, after the siege of that city, followed James II. to Paris, where he assisted in the foundation of a University for the education of Irish priests, left a gold ring at his death, which was to be sent to, and to denote, the head branch of the family. This conferred the privilege to have any of the name of Molony brought up as priests at the University, free of expense. The custom of serjeants presenting rings on taking the coif, has formed the subject of some interesting notices in that valuable work ‘Notes and Queries.’ Mr. Serjeant Wynne in his observations touching the antiquity and dignity of serjeants-at-law (1765) remarks: ‘The first introduction of rings themselves on this occasion of making serjeants is as doubtful as that of mottoes. They are taken notice of by Fortescue in the time of Henry VI., and in the several regulations for general calls, in Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth’s time. Whatever is the antiquity of these rings, that of mottoes seems to fall short of them at least a century. That in the 19th and 20th Elizabeth (1576-77) may perhaps be the first, because till that time they are no more mentioned. When Dugdale speaks of the posies that were usual, he must be understood to speak of the usages of his own time.’ The motto which Serjeant Wynne notices as of the earliest occurrence in 19th and 20th Elizabeth was ‘Lex regis præsidium.’[48]