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A rediscovered medieval inscribed ring

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Elisabeth Okasha
Elisabeth Okasha
Affiliation:
The University of Assiut, Egypt
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Extract

The silver ring illustrated in pl. IIIg has had a somewhat chequered history over the past years. From some time before 1911, when it was first published, until 1930 the ring was preserved in the Moyse's Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. In 1930 it was on display at the exhibition of English medieval art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It subsequently disappeared from public view. In 1969 the Hon. Robert Erskine presented it to the Moyse's Hall Museum where it remains, acquisition number K. 132.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 2 , December 1973 , pp. 167 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 167 note 1 I am most grateful to Mr A. R. Edwardson, Curator of the Moyse's Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds, for his cooperation and help in allowing me to study the ring and for his permission to publish it. I should like to record my thanks to the staff of the British Museum Research Laboratory for examining, cleaning and photographing the ring. My grateful thanks are also due to Mr M. Dolley, Mr C. C. Oman, Dr R. I. Page, Mrs L. E. Webster and Professor D. M. Wilson for their help in various ways concerning this ring.

page 168 note 1 The text is transliterated according to the following system: legible letters are shown in capitals, with // indicating the end of the text. ‘A’ indicates a letter damaged but legible; ‘(A)’ a damaged letter where the restoration is fairly certain;‘(…)’ three letters lost, the dots indicating the number; ‘A/B’ ligatured letters.

page 168 note 2 See Smith, A. H., The Place-Names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York, English Place-Name Society 14 (Cambridge, 1937), 192–4.Google Scholar

page 168 note 3 ibid. pp. 12 and 92.

page 168 note 4 Smith, R. A., ‘Anglo-Saxon Remains’, Victoria History of the Counties of England, Suffolk (London, 1911) 1, 349.Google Scholar

page 168 note 5 Victoria, and Museum, Albert, Exhibition of English Medieval Art (London, 1930)Google Scholar, no. 56, p. 12.

page 168 note 6 Oman, C. C., ‘Anglo-Saxon Finger-Rings’, Apollo 14 (1931), 107 and fig.Google Scholar

page 169 note 1 But cf. Smith, , Place-Names of the Bast Riding, p. 193Google Scholar, who quotes the Latin adjectival forms Beverlicensis and Bev-, Beuerlacensis.

page 169 note 2 ASC 721 DE.

page 170 note 1 Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. W. de G. Birch (London, 1885–1893) 11Google Scholar, nos.s 663, 664 and 708; Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters (London, 1968)Google Scholar, nos. 400, 399 and 429.

page 170 note 2 Michael Dolley, in a personal communication.

page 170 note 3 These offerings are mentioned in various sources, for example in a fourteenth-century document printed in Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Scots, and Other Early Memorials of Scottish History, ed. W. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1867), pp. 221–4Google Scholar and also in twelfth-century anonymous accounts of the miracles of St John of Beverley, printed in The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. James Raine, Rolls Series (1879–1984) 1, 264 and 297–8.Google Scholar

page 170 note 4 Oman, ‘Anglo-Saxon Finger-Rings’, p. 107.

page 170 note 5 C. C. Oman, in a personal communication, and in the correspondence with Forster referred to above.

page 170 note 6 Leland, J., De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ed. Hearne, T., rev. ed. (London, 1770) iv, 102Google Scholar. Leland's reference for the section in which this occurs is: ‘Ex libr: incerti autoris de vita S. Joannis archiepiscopi Ebor: sive de antiquitate Beverlacensi …’

page 171 note 1 Cf. Smith, VCHSuffolk i, 549Google Scholar: ‘the inscription does not inspire confidence’.