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The cairn

Chapter 39: The Essex Ring.
By Lady Sarah Davison Nicolas
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Essays, Letters & Speeches

About This Book

A compact miscellany of short essays, anecdotes, prayers, poems, and biographical sketches that collects reflections on grief, maternal love, benevolence, virtue, taste, and historical episodes. The pieces alternate personal memories, moral aphorisms, humorous and touching anecdotes, and brief portraits of public figures, often framed as letters, epitaphs, or short narratives. Recurring themes include the effects of sorrow and joy, domestic affection, charity, the vicissitudes of fortune, and the consolations of faith and art. The tone moves between intimate recollection and light moralizing, presenting varied, self-contained vignettes meant to instruct, console, and amuse.

The Essex Ring.

Lines written by Buchanan, in the year 1564, and sent by Mary Queen of Scotland, with a diamond ring, to Elizabeth Queen of England.

This Gem, behold, the emblem of my heart,
From whence my Cousin’s image ne’er shall part;
Clear in its lustre, spotless does it shine;
As clear, as spotless is this heart of mine.
What tho’ the stone a greater hardness wears,
Superior firmness still the figure bears.

This is the same ring so celebrated afterwards as that given by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Essex, and intrusted with a prayer for his life by that unfortunate nobleman to the Countess of Nottingham, who perfidiously concealed her mission till the solemnity of a death-bed influenced her to disclose the circumstance to the Queen. The ring is now in the possession of the descendant of Sir Thomas Warner, to whom it was given by King James I.