[Illustration: Two wire rings from a tumulus near Canterbury, Kent, England, one with a bezel effect Fairholt’s “Rambles of an Artist”] [Illustration: Two Anglo-Saxon rings found near Preston, Lancashire, England, in 1840 Fairholt’s “Rambles of an Artist”] [Illustration: Silver thumb ring found at Saxon’s Lode, England. “Fifteenth Century Archæologia,” vol. iii, p. 268] [Illustration: Silver-gilt ring, with broad, flat hoop, and rectangular bezel set with a carbuncle British Museum] [Illustration: Ring of mixed metal set with engraved stone showing a monkey looking into a mirror Fairholt’s “Rambles of an Artist”] [Illustration: 1, thumb-ring; two cockatrices engraved in relief on agate. 2, ring set with Gnostic gem Fairholt’s “Rambles of an Artist”] [Illustration: Two gold rings. 1, with high circular bezel; Frankish (?); Sixth or Seventh Century; 2, with pyramidal bezel; Lombardic (?); Seventh Century British Museum] [Illustration: Agate ring with a Runic inscription. Late Saxon British Museum] [Illustration: Massive gold ring with two bezels, one engraved with circular design of interlacing curves, the other with three interlaced triangles. Late Saxon British Museum] Even native African potentates could boast of fine jewelled rings in the seventeenth century. When an embassy of Hollanders came to visit the christianized King of the Congo in 1642, and were ushered into his presence, they found him vested in a coat and drawers of gold-cloth, and adorned with three heavy gold chains. On his right thumb was “a very large Granate or Ruby Ring, and on his left hand two great Emeralds.”[113] The red stone was almost certainly a large cabochon-cut garnet, and it is very doubtful that the green stones were genuine emeralds. Under the strict discipline of the Catholic rulers of Poland the wearing of rings was for a long time forbidden to the Jews. This restriction was removed in the reign of Sigismund Augustus (1506–1548), but the permissive decree required that a Jewish ring must bear the distinguishing inscription “Sabbation,” or “Jerusalem.” The Jews themselves sometimes enacted rigid sumptuary laws as to rings, for instance in Bologna, where a convocation of rabbis decided that men should be confined to one ring, while women were not to be allowed to wear more than three.[114] At a later period a Frankfort convocation decreed that no young girl should be permitted to wear a ring. Not improbably the natural fondness of the Hebrew women for rich jewels, a fondness already emphasized by the prophet Isaiah (chap. iii, vs. 16–26) in the case of the Daughters of Jerusalem in the eighth century B.C., may have led to an excessive use of fine rings. Indeed any strict sumptuary regulation always implies the existence of an undue degree of luxury in the usages that are subjected to legal restraint.