Rosary

The word ‘bead’ derives from the Old English ‘bede’ (prayer). People fingered sets of beads to count their prayers of penance and devotion and bedesmen were employed to pray for the dead. The beads on the rosary were organised in symbolic number sequences at intervals of five, seven or ten. One Italian visitor to London in 1498 noted that people 'attend Mass every day, and say many Paternosters in public (the women carrying long rosaries in their hands, and many who can read taking the office of our Lady with them, and with some companie in reciting in church verse by verse, in a low voice, after the manner of churchmen).' Rosaries were made illegal 1549, although many Londoners probably continued to use them in the privacy of their homes.