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Ch. 4: Historical Rings

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SOME INTERESTING RINGS OF HISTORY        171
the idea of an unbroken and unconquered soul. In a similar though slightly different sense must be explained the diamond-set ring on a " campaign medal " struck in 1578 for John Casimir, Count Palatine; this is also a memorial of one of the periodical incursions into un­happy Flanders. As the Count Palatine was at this time in alliance with the then Duke of Anjou, brother of Henri III of France, the hoop of the ring terminates in two clasped hands, denoting the fast friendship of the allies, which was, however, of very uncertain duration.
The rich Arundel Collection, chiefly brought to­gether by a Lord Howard of Arundel, towards the end of the seventeenth century, incorporated in the Marl­borough Cabinet and later dispersed, included a beau­tifully adorned gold ring set with a splendid lapis lazuli on which a Roman engraver had cut the design of Hercules wrestling with Antaeus. The hoop of this ring is ornamented on the inside with two fleur-de-lys in white enamel, the entire ring being covered with arabesques of entwined vine branches in black enamel. In his description, Rev. C. W. King conjectures from the style of ornamentation that the ring may have belonged to one of the Valois kings of France.19
On the accession of Frederick the Great, he is said to have found in the royal treasury a case containing a ring, accompanied by a memorandum to the following effect, in the handwriting of King Frederick I (1688-1740) : " This ring was given to me by my father on his deathbed, with the reminder that so long as it was preserved in the House of Brandenburg, this would not
19 C. W. King, " Notices of Collections of Glyptic Art exhibited by the Archaeological Institute in June, 1861," pp. 20, 21 ; reprint from Archaeological Journal.
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