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Secular Investiture by the Ring: Beef-Steak

In late times we have the ring adopted as a club badge by the famous Beef-Steak Club, of convivial notoriety. The members wore a blue coat, with red cape and cuffs, buttons with the initials B. S., and AND BEEF A R Ring of Beef-Steak Club. behind the President's chair was placed the Society's halbert, which, with the gridiron, was found among the rubbish after the Covent Garden fire in 1808.

Ashmole, in his 'History of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,' mentions that gold rings have been cast into the figures of garters, 'the ground on the outside enamelled with a deep blue, through which the golden letters of the motto appearing, set them off with an admirable beauty. And it seems such rings were in vogue, since the preface to the black book of the Order makes mention of wearing the garter on the leg and shoulder, and sometimes subjoins the thumb, interdum pollice gestare, by which we may naturally conclude that gold rings were formed into the fashion of garters, and bestowed by some new-installed knights upon their relations and friends to wear in memorial of so great an honour conferred upon them.' In the collection of the Rev. W. B. Hawkins is a gold official ring of the Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (Malta), with bezel oval, glazed, with skeleton, hour-glass, and scythe, in enamel on a black ground; on the shoulders of the ring is a death's head with cross-bones. At the meeting of the Archæological Institute at Norwich in July 1847, a ring formed like a strap or garter, buckled, o A was exhibited, bearing the inscription 'Mater Dei memento mei,' found at Necton, date about 1450. Rings of this fashion were in use from the close of the fourteenth century, shortly after the institution of the Order of the Garter. Other specimens are to be seen in the British Museum, and in the collection of the Archæological Institute.

A cap and a ring are conferred with the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws in Belgium.