The rings dating from the time of pagan Saxondom are few and unimportant; those, on the other hand, that belong to this later period, though rare, are more numerous, and are of considerable historical and artistic interest. It is somewhat curious that the finest date almost exclusively from the ninth century, and that most of them are inscribed. It is to this fact, doubtless, that they owe their preservation. No Anglo-Saxon rings, as far as we are aware, are ornamented with enamel. Many are enriched with inlays of niello. Gold rings thus inlaid sometimes have the appearance of having been enamelled, for the niello seems to have a bluish tinge, but this may be due, as Mr. Davenport suggests (_Anglo-Saxon Review_, Vol. V), to some optical effect caused by the yellow gold. The most important inscribed Saxon rings, three in number, are historical relics of the highest order. They belonged respectively to Alhstan, Bishop of Sherborne (824-867); Ethelwulf, King of Wessex (836-858), father of Alfred the Great; and Ethelswith, Queen of Mercia, and sister to King Alfred. The ring of Alhstan, at once the earliest episcopal finger ring and the first in chronological order of these inscribed gold rings, was found in 1753 at Llys-fæn, in the county of Carnarvonshire. It was one of the chief treasures of the famous collection of finger rings formed by the late Edmund Waterton, and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The initials of its owner are inscribed in niello upon four circular compartments, separated by four lozenge-shaped compartments also inlaid with niello (Pl. XIII, 9). The most famous of all English rings--"une pièce excessivement précieuse," says M. Fontenay, "par son originalité et son caractère"--is that of Ethelwulf, King of Wessex. It is in the form of a bishop's mitre with only one peak, and bears the inscription ETHELVVLF Rx, above which are two peacocks pecking at a tree. The legend and subject are reserved in gold upon a nielloed ground. The ring was picked up in its present bent condition in 1780 by a labourer in a field at Laverstoke, near Salisbury, where it had been pressed out of a cart-rut. It is now in the British Museum (Pl. XIII, 5). The third of this remarkable series of inscribed rings is that of Ethelswith, Queen of Mercia, daughter of Ethelwulf. It has a circular bezel, in the middle of which is a rude representation of an _Agnus Dei_ engraved in relief with a background of niello. The inner side of the bezel is incised with the inscription [Symbol: cross pattée] EATHELSVITH REGNA. This beautiful ring was found near Aberford, in Yorkshire, about the year 1870, and came into the possession of Sir A. W. Franks, who bequeathed it to the British Museum (Pl. XIII, 7).