ilar means:--

"---- receive thou my seal-ring:
Bear it to my factor; bid him by that token
Sort thee out forty pounds' worth of such wares
As thou shall think most beneficial."

[Illustration: Fig. 156.]

[Illustration: Fig. 157.]

The custom must have been common to be thus used in dramatic scenes of
real life, which the plainest audience would criticise. These plays were
produced in 1606, and serve to show that the value attached to a
seal-ring descended from very ancient to comparatively modern times.

In the Waterton collection is a massive gold signet-ring, with the rebus
of the Wylmot family quaintly designed in the taste of the fourteenth
century. In the centre is a tree; on one side of it the letters WY, and
on the other OT. Supposing the tree to be an _elm_, the name reads
Wy-_elm_-ot, or Wylmot.

[Illustration: Fig. 158.]

[Illustration: Fig. 159.]

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries religious figures were
frequently engraved on rings. Fig. 158 represents a ring upon which is
very delicately engraved a representation of St. Christopher bearing the
Saviour on his shoulder across an arm of the sea, in accordance with the
old legendary history of this saint. The circle is formed by ten
lozenges, each of which bears a letter of the inscription, =de boen cuer=.
The figure of St. Christopher was used as an amulet against sudden
death--particularly by drowning; for it was popularly believed that no
sudden or violent death could occur to any person on any day when he had
reverently looked upon this saint's effigy. Hence it was not uncommon
for charitable individuals to place such figures outside their houses,
or paint them on the walls. There is a colossal figure (and St.
Christopher was said to have been of gigantic stature), thus painted,
beside the great gate of the ancient city of Treves, on the Moselle.

The enameller and engraver were both employed on the ring Fig. 159, also
from the Londesborough collection. The hoop is richly decorated, with
quaint floriated ornament cut upon its surface, and filled in with
_niello_, then extensively used by goldsmiths in enriching their works,
as it is still in Russia. This beautiful ring is inscribed withinside
with the motto =mon cor plesor=--"my heart's delight"--and was doubtless a
_gage d'amour_.

[Illustration: Fig. 160.]

[Illustration: Fig. 161.]

Of Elizabeth of England and Mary of Scotland, interesting mementoes are
preserved