LOT 1112

Medieval Silver 'de Vere Family' Vervel Ring

CIRCA 15TH CENTURY AD

1/2" (Silver, 0.29 grams, 12 mm).

A sheet silver vervel bearing the inscription in a careful italic hand ' - Santon Downham in Suff', probably belonging to the De Vere family, then lords of the manor of Santon Downham.

Found Beccles, Suffolk, UK in 1980.

Santon Downham is a village in Suffolk, within Thetford Forest; it sits on a bend of the River Little Ouse on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. The manor of Santon Downham was held by St Edmundsbury Abbey before the Conquest, and by Frodo, Abbot Baldwin’s brother, in 1086. A John de Santon appears c.1170, and his granddaughter Alice married Robert de Vere, 5th Earl of Oxford (1240-96), which is the likeliest explanation for the manor passing to the de Vere family until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII (1536-41).