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Customs and Incidents: Cloudesley

The body of the great naval commander Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was shipwrecked on the rocks of Scilly in 1707, was washed on shore, when some fishermen, it is said, having stolen a valuable emerald ring, buried the corpse. The ring, being shown about, made a great noise over the island, and was the cause of the discovery and ultimate removal of the body to Westminster Abbey.

Another account is that which was published under the authority of the Earl of Romney, grandson of Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Some years after the fatal shipwreck, an aged woman confessed to the parish minister of St. Mary's on her deathbed that, exhausted with fatigue, one man who had survived the disaster reached her hut, and that she had murdered him to secure the valuable property on his person. This worst of wreckers then produced a ring taken from the finger of her victim, and it was afterwards identified as one presented to Sir Cloudesley Shovel by Lord Berkeley. William Trotter, of an ancient family on the Scottish border, is recorded to have fallen at the battle of Flodden; and, in corroboration of the fact, a gold ring was found about the middle of the last century, upon the site of the field of battle, bearing an inscription in Norman-French, having between each word a boar's head, the armorial bearings of the Trotters.

Martius, in 'Titus Andronicus,' when he falls into a dark pit, discovers the body of Bassianus, by the light of the jewel on the dead man's hand :- Upon his bloody finger he doth wear A precious ring, that lightens all the hole, Which, like a taper in some monument, Doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks, And shows the rugged entrails of this pit :

So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus, When he by night lay bath'd in human blood.

I may mention the employment of rings for criminal purposes, such as their use for concealing poison, of which we have instances in past ages, and in late times. Hannibal, we are told, from a fear of being delivered up to the Romans by Prusius, King of Bithynia, swallowed poison, which, to be prepared for the worst, he carried with him in the hollow of a ring. To this Juvenal alludes in his Tenth Satire :- Nor swords, nor spears, nor stones from engines hurl'd, Shall quell the man whose frown alarm'd the world; The vengeance due to Cannæ's fatal field, And floods of human gore-a ring shall yield.

Demosthenes is also said to have died in a similar manner. The keeper of the Roman treasures, after the robbery by Crassus of the gold deposited there by Camillus, broke the stone of his ring in his mouth, in which poison was concealed, and immediately expired. 'The ancients,' remarks the Rev. C. W. King ('Antique Gems '), 'were acquainted with vegetable poisons, as speedy in their effects as the modern strychnine, as appears in the death of Britannicus from a potion prepared by Locusta, and in innumerable other instances. These hollow rings were put together with a degree of skill far beyond that of our modern jewellers; for the soldering of the numerous joinings of the gold plates of which they are formed is absolutely imperceptible even when breathed upon-a test under which the best modern solder always assumes a lighter tint.' Motley, in his 'Rise of the Dutch Republic,' relates that in the conspiracies against the life of the Prince of Orange (about 1582), under the influence of the court of Spain, theyoung Lamoral Egmont, in return for the kindness shown to him by the Prince, attempted to destroy him at his own table by means of poison which he kept concealed in a ring. Sainte Philip de Marnix, Lord of Aldegonde, was to have been taken off in the same way; and a hollow ring filled with poison was said to have been found in Egmont's lodgings. The young noble was imprisoned, and his guilt was undoubted, but he owed his escape from death to the Prince of Orange.

Poison ring.

A poison ring of curious construction is described by Mr. Fairholt as richly engraved, and set with two rubies and a pyramidal diamond; the collet securing the latter stone opens with a spring, and exhibits a somewhat large Venetian poison ring receptacle for such virulent poisons as were concocted by Italian chemists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. FF The other ring has a representation of St. Mark seated holding his gospel, and giving a benediction. The spaces between this figure and the oval border are perforated, so that the interior of the box is visible, and the relic enshrined might be seen.