Will of the Month: Alice Walter and Her ‘Deaths Head’ Ring

Posted by e.m.vine@exeter.ac.uk

The end of October and the beginning of November marks ‘Allhallowtide’ – the time of the year when Western Christians, including in early modern England, have traditionally turned their thoughts to the dead with the marking of All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day. While Protestantism rejected purgatory and prayers for the dead, post-Reformation England saw the localised continuance of Allhallowtide traditions such as the ringing of bells to comfort the dead, the baking of ‘Soul Mass cakes’, and the reciting of phrases such as ‘God have your soul, Bones and all’.[1] This October ‘Will of the Month’ post features a Halloween-appropriate bequest – a ‘deaths head Ring’ – in other words, a ring with some sort of skull on it. This ring was mentioned in the will of Alice Walter, a widow of the parish of St Sepulchre in the City of London, who died in September 1665.[2] It may have looked similar to the seventeenth-century example below, which is held at the British Museum – a gold mourning ring with a white enamelled skull.

The very act of making a will is of course predicated on looking ahead and preparing for death, but the contents of a will, and the presence of certain objects, can also hint at a testator’s broader thoughts about mortality. In our previous ‘Will of the Month’ post, we discussed the Exeter Alderman Thomas Hunte, who pre-emptively had his own tombstone made, and kept it in his house. Alice Walter’s will opened with a formulaic comment on the inevitability of death – she acknowledged ‘this short and Transitory life’ and had decided to write down her intentions ‘considering the certainty of death and the uncertainty of the tyme thereof’.

‘Memento mori’ and mourning rings

Rings with iconography such as skulls, bones, and coffins were a form of ‘memento mori’ jewellery that was popular in the seventeenth century: items which were owned and worn to focus one’s mind upon preparation for death in everyday life. Walter died in London at the height of the Great Plague of 1665 – so it is possible that the circumstances focused her mind somewhat on preparing for her latter end. Yet the ‘deaths head Ring’ appears to have been a longer-held possession. Memento mori rings were not necessarily the same as mourning rings, which also appear frequently in wills. Mourning rings were commemorative: they were often purchased specially following an individual’s death – indeed testators often set aside money for this purpose. At gentry funerals, they were sometimes dispersed as tokens to attendees, and mourners would keep them as a means of remembering the deceased.[3] Often testators might disperse or leave money for several mourning rings, and specify how much each should cost: some beneficiaries might be worthy of a ring valued at 20 shillings, others only 10 shillings.

Three Gold (?) Rings

Walter did not identify the ‘deaths head Ring’ as a mourning ring as such. She left it to her daughter, Mary Long, and in the same clause she left her wedding ring to her other daughter, Anne Worsley. Later in the will, Walter left to her son Clement ‘my seale Ring’. A seal ring would be engraved with a personal mark or family crest, and would be pressed into sealing wax to leave an official stamp on a document. As Walter was a widow, it is likely that this was her husband’s seal ring, passed on to the eldest son. All three of Walter’s children received a ring owned, used, or worn in her lifetime, rings which had practical functions and personal meaning as well as financial value. Walter’s will took pains to record the identifying features or purpose of each ring, to ensure that the correct item of jewellery was set aside amongst her personal effects, and passed to the correct beneficiary. Walter gives us no further information about the materials the rings were made of or her reasons for bequeathing them as she did, so we can’t know for certain why one daughter received the wedding ring, and one the skull.

‘Part and share alike’

This careful division of possessions between her three children is also apparent in Walter’s other bequests. Equally, alongside the striking reference to an object associated with death, there is also life. She left ‘my Childbedd sheete’ along with ‘my best Curtaines and vallens with Stooles and Cushions of the same… and Two paire of holland Pillowbeers’ for ‘the joynt use and benefit of every one of my Children as they shall have occasion to make use of them’. The childbed sheet, like other childbed linen, could be a practical as well as a personally significant bequest, as similarly described linen would often be shared and exchanged between female friends and relatives at times of need. Acknowledging that the linen, alongside other soft furnishings, could be used by any of her children who had ‘occasion to make use of them’, Walter’s will looked ahead to providing things of practical use to her children at their different stages of life.

Walter also left ‘unto my said Two daughters All my wearing Apparell both Lynnen and woollen to be devided equally between them part and share alike And alsoe foure Pewter dishes a peece and they to take their Choyce’. This clause hints at a degree of trust in her daughters, that they were permitted to choose and would be able to amicably divide up these items between them. But there was perhaps not the same degree of trust bestowed upon her son and executor, Clement Walter. She left each of her daughters a bed, one of which was the ‘ffeather=bedd in the upper Chamber of my dwelling house called Clems chamber’. As well as this room being still known as ‘Clem’s chamber’, it appears that Clement would also inherit the lease of her main dwelling house in ‘Katherine wheeleyard’. Walter seems to have been concerned that Clement would not give up the large items of furniture, and accordingly left the following contingency: ‘But in case my Executor shall not be willing to part with the before mencioned Goods […] in Lieu thereof I doe give unto either of my said Two daughters the summe of Tenn pounds a peece’.

Tokens of love?

Her son and executor Clement, as well as being entrusted with the house and the residue of his mother’s estate, was also specifically left a ‘Beere Bowle Salt and Two Spoones of silver’. Alongside her executor, Walter also appointed two overseers of her will, William Holloway and John Fowler, and bequeathed ‘for there care and paines to be taken therein I give unto either of them the Summe of Tenn shillings for a token of love’. The bequests in Alice Walter’s will span large shifts in scale: her dwelling house, her featherbed, two spoons, three small rings. The phrase ‘token of love’ summarises some of the careful decisions that Walter had made: dividing up her clothes between her daughters, recompensing the overseers’ careful work, pre-empting and counteracting her son’s potential reluctance to part with her household furniture. Indeed the three identified rings – the seal ring, the wedding ring, and even the ‘deaths head Ring’, carefully set aside and assigned to each of her three children, were all in their own way tokens of love.

[1] Ronald Hutton, ‘Saints and Souls’ in The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, (Oxford University Press, 1996), p.374

[2] PROB 11/317/428, Will of Alice Walter, Widow of Saint Sepulchre, City of London, 04 September 1665.

[3] See David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, (Oxford University Press, 1997) p.453.