The use of rush-rings in England, in 1217, for mock marriages, is vouched for in the " Constitutiones " 2i of
Richard, Bishop of Salisbury. It is provided that whoever places a
rush-ring, or a ring of cheap or precious material, in sport and jest
upon a woman's hand, that she shall the more willingly become friendly
with him, although imagining himself to be joking will be constrained
to marry. Another authority declares that when the ecclesiastical court
enforced matrimony as a penalty or a reparation for bad conduct, a rush
ring or a ring of straw was used at the ceremony.2^
There
are several passages in English poetry of the Elizabethan age and
later, referring to this use of a " rush ring." In his " Two Noble
Kinsmen," Fletcher writes :
Rings
she made Of rushes that grew by, and to 'em spoke The prettiest posies;
Thus our true loves ty'd; This you may loose, not me, and many a one.
In the seventeenth century Sir William Davenant (1605-1668) speaks in the following mocking strain of such a ring:
I'll crown thee with a garland of straw then And I'll marry thee with a rush ring.
The ballad called the Winchester Wedding has these lines :
Pert Strephon was kind to Betty,
And blithe as a bird in the spring; And Tommy was so to Katy,
And wedded her with a rush ring.
24 Cap. 55.
25 " Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimas Latinitatis," Parisiis, 1733, vol. i, col. 457.
