The “Verney Ring,” with a portrait of Charles I of England, is, if genuine, the only relic of a heroic tragedy. It is said to have been bestowed by Charles I upon Sir Edmund Verney, one of his most faithful followers in the perils of the Civil War. Sir Edmund was killed at the battle of Edgehill, in 1642, where the Cavaliers were utterly defeated, but even in death he still held the royal standard in his grasp. The ring was taken from his hand, and the body abandoned; it was never recovered. As he was helped into the world by a Cæsarean operation, it became a common saying in the neighborhood of Edgehill that Sir Edmund was neither born nor buried.[330] With that striking indifference to moral right and wrong so characteristic of Charles II of England, he did not hesitate to bestow a choice ring from his own hand upon the notorious Jeffreys, when the latter was leaving London on one of his circuits always marked by the browbeating of witnesses and accused, and the imposition of capital sentences, wherever possible. It was at a somewhat later date, in 1685, just after the accession of James II, that Jeffreys conducted the trials of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth’s adherents, which came to be known as the “Bloody Assize.” This fact of the presentation was published in the Royal Gazette, thus notably strengthening Jeffreys’ prestige. So general, however, was the reprobation of his heartless and bloodthirsty administration of his judicial office that the ring was called “Jeffreys’ bloodstone.”[331] In March, 1748, as some ploughmen were tilling a field seven miles from Mullingor, County Westmeath, Ireland, they discovered a grave, the bottom, sides and ends of which were formed each of a single slab of stone. Within the grave were the bones of a man of gigantic stature, and also an urn and a valuable ring, set with twenty-five diamonds. Bishop Pococke, treating of this ring, mentions the fact that Rosa Failge, eldest son of Cathoir More, known as Cathoir the Great, who reigned in 122 A.D., was called the “Hero of Rings,” but the writer adds that the ring could scarcely have belonged to him, since diamonds do not appear to have been known in Ireland at this early date.[332]