ith
a heavy cable moulding: inside, next the finger, is the cross and sacred
monogram, placed on each side of the mystic word _anamzapta_, which we
shall immediately have to explain more fully when speaking of the rings
commonly worn as charms.

These massive thumb-rings were indicative of wealth or importance, when
worn by the middle classes who had obtained any municipal position. When
Falstaff speaks of his slenderness in his youth, he declares that he
could then have "crept through an alderman's thumb-ring." Like the
massive gold chains still worn by that honourable fraternity, they told
of a trader's wealth. The inventories of personal property belonging to
burgesses in the Middle Ages, contain frequent allusions to such rings,
without which they would have felt shorn of an important part of their
head-earned honours. Among the wills and inventories preserved at Bury
St. Edmund's, published by the Camden Society, is one made by Edward
Lee, of that town, bearing date 1535, in which he bequeaths to a friend,
"my double wreathed ryng of gold, whych I ware on my thumbe." From this
description it is evident that this ring must have borne great
resemblance to that given in Fig. 131, with its outer cable or double
wreathed pattern. There is a brass in Hastings Church, Sussex, with the
effigy of a gowned citizen wearing such a ring. That such rings became
in the end indicative of that class, and were retained in fashion for
this reason when they had been long discarded from general use, may be
safely inferred from the description of a character introduced in the
Lord Mayor's Show in the year 1664, who is said to be "habited like a
grave citizen--gold girdle and gloves hung thereon, rings on his
fingers, and a seal ring on his thumb." Such rings were evidently used
according to the most ancient mode as personal signets, by such as were
not entitled to bear arms; hence originated the quaint inventions known
as "merchant's marks," which were impressed on merchandise, painted on
shields instead of armorial bearings, inserted in memorial windows of
stained glass, and worn on the thumb for constant use in sealing. A very
fine ring of this kind is engraved in the Journal of the Archaeological
Institute, vol. iii., and is here copied in Fig. 132. It was found in
the bed of the Severn, near Upton, and is probably a work of the
fifteenth century; it is of silver, and has been strongly gilt. The hoop
is spirally grooved, and upon the