Note 173 — Chapter III · SUMMARY.

Lord Stafford, one of the victims murdered by Titus Oates’ perjuries in the Popish Plot, concocted by the republicans in the seventeenth century, left to his niece, the night before his execution, a plain iron sword, and a large turquoise-ring, part of the personal spoils of James IV., long retained in the Howard family. The ring is said to be that of the Queen of France, which caused Queen Margaret’s jealousy; but if it be indeed Anne of Bretagne’s ring, that gem is strangely overvalued in chronicle at nineteen thousand crowns. These relics are now in the Herald’s College.