This exceptionally heavy gold ring has a substantial hoop cast, chased and engraved with scrolls. The bezel is in the form of a circular drum. On the front the arms of the Boteler family are engraved within a cartouche. Around the sides of the drum is engraved ‘DO NOT FOR TO REPENT’, urging the wearer not to sin, lest he repent of the deed later.

This ring would have been used as a signet, pressed into hot wax to seal a letter or packet. Personal seals (secreta) provided an essential legal safeguard and were used to witness documents such as wills, deeds of gift, loans and commercial documents, personal letters and land indentures. Signet rings could be engraved with a coat of arms or crest, an initial, a merchant's mark (a geometric symbol used to mark goods or personal belongings), or a personal symbol. Sixteenth and seventeenth century portraits show signet rings worn on the forefinger or thumb, presumably to make it easy to apply the ring to the wax by turning the hand. They were items of jewellery with a practical function but the use of precious metals and engraved hardstones indicates that they were also signs of status.

The arms are close to those granted in 1470 to Richard Boteler of Sandwich, Kent, which, without the colours, may be simplified as a covered cup, between three talbot heads (a dog of bloodhound type), erased, on a field which is ‘gyronny of six’, i.e. it is composed of six triangular pieces of cloth. These arms were confirmed to Henry Boteler who moved from Sandwich and rebuilt the mansion of Heronden in the parish of Eastry in Kent, where this ring was later found. He died in 1580. His son, Richard received a grant of distinctively different arms in 1589. Although the arms on the ring have four talbot heads rather than three, it seems likely that the ring was made either for Henry, or for Richard prior to 1589 . In 1800 it was recorded that a gold seal ring ‘weighing nineteen pennyweights [29.5 grams], with this motto, Do not, for to repent’ and the arms of Boteler granted in 1470 had been found ‘a few years since’ in Eastry and was in the possession of William Boteler. In 1870, the memory was that the ring had been ‘stuck on the tooth of a harrow’.