St. Edward, who died on the fifth of January, 1066, gave a ring which he wore to the Bishop of Westminster. The origin of it is surrounded with much mystery. A pilgrim is said to have brought it to the king and to have informed him that St. John the Evangelist had made known to the donor that the king’s decease was at hand.[217] This “_St. Edward’s Ring_,” as it was called, was kept for some time at Westminster Abbey as a relic of the saint, and was applied for the cure of the falling sickness or epilepsy and for the cramp. From this arose the custom of the English kings, who were believed to have inherited St. Edward’s powers of cure, solemnly blessing every year rings for distribution. Good Friday was the day appointed for the blessing of rings. They were often called “medycinable rings,” and were made both of gold and silver, and the metal was composed of what formed the king’s offering to the Cross on Good Friday. The prayers used at the ceremony of blessing the rings on Good Friday are published in Waldron’s Literary Museum; and also in Pegge’s _Curiatia Miscellanea_, Appendix, No. iv. p. 164. Cardinal Wiseman is in possession of a MS. containing the ceremony of blessing cramp rings. It belonged to the English Queen Mary. At the commencement of the MS. are emblazoned the arms of Philip and Mary, around which are the badges of York and Lancaster and the whole is inclosed within a frame of fruit and flowers. The first ceremony is headed: “Certain Prayers to be used by the Queen’s Leigues in the Consecration of the Crampe Rynges.” Accompanying it is an illumination representing the queen kneeling, with a dish--containing the rings to be blessed--on each side of her; and another exhibits her touching for the evil a boy on his knees before her, introduced by the clerk of the closet; his right shoulder is bared and the queen appears to be rubbing it with her hand. The author of the present work caused an application to be made for leave to take a copy of this illumination, so that his readers might have the benefit of it: the secretary of the Cardinal refused. In a medical treatise, written in the fourteenth century,[218] there is what is called the _medicine_ against the cramp; and modernizing the language, it runs thus: “For the Cramp. Take and cause to be gathered on Good Friday, at 5 Parish Churches, 5 of the first pennies that is offered at the cross, of each Church the first penny; then take them all and go before the cross and say 5 paternosters to the worship of the 5 wounds and bear them on the 5 days, and say each day all much in the same way; and then cause to be made a ring thereof without alloy of other metal and write within it Jasper, Batasar, Altrapa” (these are blundered forms of the three kings of Cologne) “and write without Jh’es Nazarenus; and then take it from the goldsmith upon a Friday and say 5 paternosters as thou did before and use it always afterward.”