Wavy mourning ring for the most interesting and worldly Willam Windham II of Felbrigg Hall,Norfolk.
The rarest form of c18th mourning ring styles is surely the wavy band,this ring gently undulating,reading 'Willm Windham Esq ob.30oct 1761 ae 44'.
18 carat gold.Makers mark MC.
Size 7.25 US,O UK.
Windham didn't go to University but set off on the Grand Tour of Europe with his tutor Benjamin Stillingfleet(from whom the term 'Blue Stocking' originated) studying Italian and French painting,architecture and classical antiquities.He favoured to winter in Geneva where he became a central figure in the 'Common Room', a group of young English Grand Tourists who combined amateur theatricals with intrepid mountaineering.Here he became engaged to the noblewoman Elizabeth de Chapeaurouge but thought better of it and only managed to escape from his impetuous proposal with considerable effort and expense.At some point heacquired an Austo-Hungarian Hussar uniform in which he was painted in the swagger portrait which still hangs at Felbrigg. 
A passionate theatre-goer he was a close friend and a close ally of the great actor David Garrick with whom he was painted by Francis Hayman.
He had a passion for fireworks and blew the roof off the Granary at Felbrigg in 1755.
He remodelled Felbrigg and created a Gothick library and a Cabinet room to house his Grand Tour collections.He hastily married the pregnant Sarah Lukin in 1750 and their son was only 11 when William died of TB in 1761.