A word more of Elizabeth and Mary. Aubrey says,[279] “I have seen some rings made for sweethearts, with a heart enamelled held between two right hands. See an epigram of George Buchanan on two rings that were made by Elizabeth’s appointment, being layd one upon the other showed the like figure. The heart was two diamonds, which joyned, made the heart. Queen Elizabeth kept one moietie, and sent the other as a token of her constant friendship to Mary, Queen of Scots; but she cut off her head for all that.” Aubrey, who also quotes an old verse as to the wearers of rings: _Miles, mercator, stultus, maritus, amator_,--here alludes, it is presumed, to a diamond ring originally given by Elizabeth to Mary as a pledge of affection and support and which Mary commissioned Beatoun to take back to her when she determined to seek an asylum in England. The following is one of Buchanan’s epigrams on the subject of the ring, described by Aubrey: “_Loquitur adamas in cordis effigiem sculptus, quem Maria Elizabethæ Angl. misit:_” (The diamond sculptured into the form of a heart and which Mary sent to the English Elizabeth, says:) “_Quod te jampridem videt, ac amat absens,_ _Hæc pignus cordis gemma, et imago mei est,_ _Non est candidior non est hæc purior illo_ _Quamvis dura magis non image firma tamen._” These lines we thus render in verse: “This gem is pledge and image of my heart: A heart that looks and loves, though not in view. The jewel has no clearer, purer part-- It may be harder, but is not more true.”