At the Loan Exhibition of Ancient and Modern Jewellery at the South Kensington Museum, in 1872, a serjeant’s gold ring, inscribed ✠ LEX X REGIS X PRÆSIDIUM, was shown--the property of Mr. John Evans--as the earliest known, the date being 1576-77. The small size of the ring would assume that it was merely complimentary. Some barristers that Lord Brougham did not think much of, wishing to be made serjeants, he suggested that the most appropriate motto that could be found for their rings would be the old legal word ‘scilicet.’ [Illustration: Serjeants’ ring.] This illustration represents a serjeant’s ring, supposed to be of the seventeenth century--a plain band of gold, engraved with ‘Imperio regit unus æquo’ (Horace, lib. iii., Ode iv.). In the collection of Mr. J. W. Singer is a very fine serjeant’s ring, which that gentleman attributes as of very early manufacture. It is a rare type of rings of this description, which have not been much noticed. The inscription reads: ‘Legis executo regis pservatio.’ In France, Italy, and Germany, a forensic order of knighthood was frequently conferred on the successful practitioner at the bar. Bartoli, the oracle of the law in the fourteenth century, asserted that at the end of the tenth year of successful professional exertion, the _avocât_ belonging to the denomination of _l’Ordre des Avocâts_ became _ipso facto_ a knight. When the distinction was applied for, the King commissioned some ancient Knight of the Forensic Order to admit the postulant into it. The _avocât_ knelt before the Knight-commissary and said: ‘I pray you, my lord and protector, to dress me with the sword, belt, golden spurs, golden collar, _golden ring_, and all the other ornaments of a true knight. I will not use the advantages of knighthood for profane purposes; I will use them only for the purposes of religion, for the Church, and the holy Christian faith, in the _warfare of the science_ to which I am devoted.’ The postulant then rose; and being fully equipped, and girded with the sword, he became, for all purposes, a member of the order of knighthood. In the Memoirs of the Maréchal de Vieilleville, who died in 1571, such knights are mentioned as very common. In 1795 the Order of _Avocâts_ was suppressed, after 427 years of a brilliant existence. Doctors, as indicative of their position, wore formerly a ring on the third finger of the right hand. A ring formed part of the investiture of three poets-laureate by the Chancellor of the University of Strasburg in 1621, who at their installation pronounced these words: ‘I create you, being placed in a chair of state, crowned with laurel and ivy, and wearing _a ring of gold_, and the same do pronounce and constitute poets-laureate in the name of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.’ Gower, in his ‘Confessio Amantis,’ mentions a statue of Apollo, adorned with a ring:--