Another object which occupied an important position in the Middle Ages and often received special attention at the hands of the goldsmith was the rosary. It was suspended occasionally from the neck, but was more often worn upon the wrist, at the girdle, or attached to a finger ring, and was formed of a string of beads of various sizes and materials representing Aves, Paternosters, and Glorias: each bead receiving the name of the prayer it represented. The rosary, as at the present day, was divided into decades of Aves, each decade being preceded by a Paternoster and followed by a Gloria. The materials of which they were composed are well illustrated in the inventory[68] of the jewels belonging to Adam Ledyard, a London jeweller in 1381. It includes: "4 sets of paternosters of white amber; 16 sets of paternosters of amber; 5 sets of paternosters of coral and geet [jet]; 6 sets of aves of geet, and paternosters of silver-gilt; 38 sets of aves of geet, with gaudees of silver-gilt; 14 sets of aves of blue glass, with paternosters of silver-gilt; 28 sets of paternosters of geet; 15 sets of paternosters of mazer; and 5 sets of paternosters of white bone for children." [68] Riley (H. T.), _Memorials of London and London life_, p. 455. The makers of these beads were termed paternosterers; and Paternoster Row and Ave Maria Lane were so called from the "turners of beads" who resided there. In Paris, as early as the thirteenth century, the commerce in rosaries was a most flourishing one, and it was customary there to divide the makers or dealers in these articles into three categories--paternosterers of bone and horn, of coral and mother-of-pearl, and of amber and jet. In England the rosary makers do not seem to have been so specialised. [Illustration: _PLATE XIX_ MEDIÆVAL PENDANTS] The larger beads were sometimes of gold, silver, and silver-gilt, of open-work, beautifully chased and engraved, and of boxwood and ivory exquisitely carved. The "gaudees" or "gauds" in the above quotation, the ornaments or trinkets attached to the rosary, were commonly in the form of a crucifix, while the small German charms mentioned above (p. 120) were mostly employed for the same purpose. Of the spherical-shaped gauds or nuts pendent to the rosary, called in French _grains de chapelet_ and known in Germany as _Betnüsse_, many fine examples exist in boxwood. They have often an open-work case which opens with a hinge, and displays two hemispheres filled with a number of carved figures of minute proportions.