To: Malcolm Jones

From: Rachel Hunt

Date: 14/7/2021
Edit no.: 1

Dear Malcolm,
An excellent review! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Thank you.
A few tweaks requested, and clarifications, and it is a bit long – most book
reviews are one side of A4. I accept that yours will remain longer, even with my
suggested deletions, which I hope you don’t find too irritating!
Sorry it has taken me so long to respond. I hope you’re keeping well, and I look
forward to hearing from you.
With best wishes,
Rachel
INSCRIBED VERVELS A corpus and discussion of late medieval and Renaissance
hawking rings found in Britain [BAR British Series 648]
Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson
BAR Publishing, Oxford, 2019.
ISBN 9781407316789
88 pages. 112 illustrations, 15 figures, 17 graphs, 4 maps, 29.7 x 21.0 cm
Paperback £20

Until a few years ago I was unfamiliar with the term vervel – I must have seen
the word occasionally but could not have defined it – and perhaps other
members are also unfamiliar with this particular variety of antique metalware.
Now – thanks to BAR Publishing – we have an entire corpus, cataloguing 119 of
these small metal rings, which seem sometimes to have been attached to the
hawk’s legs, sometimes to its jesses (short straps fastened to the bird's legs in
orderto tether it) – and the present book would have benefited from a
simple diagram showing these possibilities. In traditional archaeological
fashion, the Catalogue proper presents a typology of the vervel corpus. The
commonest is the “Washer” type, Type A; Type B is the “Ring” type, like a small
finger-ring; and Type C, the “Ring with Shield” type, sub-divided into three,
depending on how the (armorial) shield relates to the ring. Type D is a very
rare “Hinged Ring” variety.
But whatever practical application vervels may have had, there is no doubt
that their principal function was to identify the owner of the bird -- the hawk
was an expensive toyplaything, and if lost, the owner wanted his toy back. In
most inscriptions this is implicit, but on some vervels it is made explicit, e.g.
RETORNE TOO HVGH PORTMAN (B18). In many cases, the single vervel found is
inscribed with the name and address of the owner “on both faces”, but –
hawks’ legs, coming in pairs -- every A-type vervel described as being inscribed
only “on one face”, and especially those with legends beginning or ending of…,
pre-supposes a missing second vervel bearing the owner’s name or place of
residence, though nowhere in the present volume is this spelled out. A17 &
A18 are a rare case of both vervels being found together (500m apart), the
name of the owner -- George Ashton -- on one, his address on the other – of
minting linc’ln.
That the present volume, and Hawks’ varvels (2018) by Morel & Horobin, have
appeared only in recent years is entirely due to the increasing popularity of the
hobby of metal-detecting, and the passing of the Treasure Act of 1996, which
makes it a legal requirement that any finds of precious metal over 300 years
old – and almost all vervels meet both requirements -- must be officially
recorded. This recording is via the Portable Antiquities Scheme (‘PAS’,
administered by the British Museum), and freely available for consultation
online. Before the 1990s, there simply was no corpus of vervels, there existed a
handful only, in museum collections. The present volume published in 2019
records 84 vervels from the PAS database -- on the database currently
(accessed March 2021) there are now 112 vervels recorded, and every month
adds a further one or two.
Why should these tiny artefacts be of interest to us? Principally, I suggest, for
social historical reasons. Many vervels – especially of the ‘washer’ Type A --
which are also the most numerous, can be matched with identifiable
individuals. Falconry having always been an elite pastime, there are several
Earls, Dukes, Princes, and even Kings, represented amongst the specimens
recorded. The only known gold vervel, belonging to a bird of Henry IV (c.1399-
c.1413), has been in the British Museum since 1855, and in elegant Black Letter
script proudly proclaims, sum regis anglie – “I am the King of England’s”
(relegated here to Appendix B, “Vervels in Museums”). And Henry’s son is
thought to be the Prince Edward in question named on A01, one of the ill-fated
‘Princes in the Tower’, murdered in 1483. Another Prince, who also died
tragically young, is commemorated by the vervel (Ci05) engraved with the
Prince of Wales’s feathers and inscribed Henrye Prince, the son of James I
(1594-1612). Curiously, the only non-precious metal vervel recorded here
(A03), bears the inscription A Pitcairne at Cortt keper, identifying Andrew
Pitcairn (d.1642), Keeper of King Charles I’s hawks. Occasionally vervels even
bear dates, such as (strangely omitted from the present corpus, though first
recorded in the 2012 Treasure Report), LEIC-EA5812 the property of one
THOMAS GREARGR [Gregor] OF TRINITI PLACE NOTTINGAM ANNO DOMINE
1597, (strangely omitted from the present corpus, though first recorded as
LEIC-EA5812[?] in the 2012 Treasure Report).
I have to say that the several pages of statistical analysis and 15 graphs leave
me not only cold, but unconvinced, as some of the conclusions drawn
contradict the data contained within the volume . On page 12, for example, the
authors conclude that Type Ciii vervels “are the earliest type” (post-1525) – a
conclusion arrived at only by avowedly excluding from the analysis of Type A’s
statistics the two 15C vervels (A01, A14 -- p.11), and by forgetting A30 (also
15C), not to mention, the Henry IV example from the early 15C (above)! Two
further 15C specimens may now be added to this Type, one in a private
collection (below), the other marked ravensholme recorded on the PAS
database since publication [SUR-44916D]. This seems to me not only -- and
obviously -- to invalidate this particular conclusion as to the earliest type,
butThis authors’ arbitrary exclusion of certain data serves to also to
undermine confidence in the methodology as a whole, when the authors
clearly feel it is acceptable, arbitrarily to exclude certain data..
It is perhaps already a commonplace that the invention of the internet enables
us to explore the past more intensively that at any other period in human
history. Happening upon my vervels board on Pinterest
[https://www.pinterest.co.uk/malcm2557/vervels/], a private collector in S.
Africa was kind enough to alert me to several important vervels in his
collection (and unknown to the present authors), which – importantly –
includes another 15C Type A vervel, engraved in Black Letter with the name of
a certain ricard l punctuated by elegant floral motifs on one face, and on the
other side with more such motifs and the initials r l. Of the two other Type A
vervels in the same collection, one is inscribed DVCAT LANCASTR -- which I take
to be for Ducatus Lancastriae, Duchy of Lancaster -- while the other is inscribed
on both faces not with a name but – uniquely -- with the motto, VIVAT REX
CVRRAT LEX.The authors exhibit considerable naivety when it comes to
discussing the inscriptional texts (p.14-15). It is not uncommon for family
names to have extra letters or be spelt unconventionally, we read on p.15 -- as
if the authors expect early modern English to observe the spelling conventions
of 21C English! Places, including counties, can also be spelt variously… As with
personal names, towns and counties might have letters added… The claim that
the vervel associated with George Ashton from Lincolnshire (A18) has Lincoln
or Lincolnshire spelt lincin (p.15), is not only not true – it is in fact, spelled
linc’ln – but even in the Catalogue it is transcribed as lincln, appearing as Lincin
only later in the text of the entry! And to seek to draw inferences from the
number of points on a purely punctuational ‘star’ (p.14) is absurd.
Such relatively minor infelicities aside, however, with the present volume we
may truly say that the vervel has come of age, and is now properly introduced
to the antiquarian world.

Malcolm Jones

For some images of vervels, refer to Malcolm Jones’s PINTEREST page:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/malcm2557/vervels/