The color of the stones chosen for the adornment of episcopal rings always had a symbolical significance. The glowing red of the ruby indicated glory, the clear blue of the sapphire, chastity and happiness, the pure white of the rock-crystal, guilelessness, while the hue of the amethyst called to mind the color of the wine used in the Holy Eucharist. The emerald, as is well known, signified by its green color the virtue of hope and also the Resurrection. The general rule, expressed or understood, that a sapphire should be set in an episcopal ring, seems to have been more commonly observed in England in the earlier centuries than it was on the Continent. Undoubtedly many of these stones were obtained at the time of the Crusades. As English examples, Mr. O. M. Dalton cites the rings of three early bishops,[446] namely, those of Flambard (1099–1128), Geoffrey Rufus (1133–40) and William de St. Barbara (1143–52), now in the Durham Chapter Library; all have sapphires. The same stone serves as setting for the ring of William of Wykeham, a massive plain gold hoop, exhibited by the Dean of Winchester at South Kensington in 1862, to which the cathedral also contributed a thirteenth-century episcopal ring set with a large sapphire cut _en cabochon_.[447] There is as well the ring of William Wytlesey, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1374) in the possession of Sir Arthur Evans and that of John Stanbery, Bishop of Hereford (d. 1474). The inventory of 28 Edward I lists sapphire-set rings of the archbishops of Dublin and York as well as of the bishops of Salisbury and St. Asaph. The rebel Piers Gaveston, favorite of Edward II, carried off with him, among other royal jewels, sapphire rings that had belonged to the Bishop of Bath and Wells and to the Abbot of Abingdon. In the inventory of Elizabeth’s favorite ecclesiastic, Archbishop Parker of Canterbury, is listed “a ringe with a blewe sapphire,” valued at four pounds sterling. Old records show that even in the fourteenth century, the sapphire, although greatly favored for prelates’ rings, did not yet enjoy any exclusive preference. For example, during the reigns of Clement V, and John XXII, in Avignon (1307–1334), the papal registers for 1317 note, in one case, “seven gold rings with various stones for new cardinals, 68 gold florins.” This, however, is followed by another entry recording “four gold rings with Oriental sapphires for the consecration of prelates, 26 gold florins,” and again “a gold ring with an Oriental sapphire for Cardinal A, 23 florins.” Three years later, in 1320, we have “seven rings for the seven new cardinals, three set with Oriental sapphires, three others with Oriental emeralds, and one with a balas-ruby, the total cost being 106 gold florins.”[448]