| Content Description | A fifteenth-century prayer book containing many prayers to the Virgin Mary, and near the end prayers to saints associated with East Anglia, such as Edmund, Etheldreda, Helena (identified with Colchester), and also Frideswide.
The volume has been damaged and the condition is fragile. The opening page is handsomely illuminated with border scrolls of leaves and flowers. Painted on the end-leaves are three shields that have yet to be fully identified.
It is in a fine Oxford binding, blind-tooled calf over wooden boards backed by a legal document from the diocese of York. The stamps on the binding are those associated with a known prolific binder who was based in Oxford. These distinctive stamps allow us to date the binding of the book to sometime in the 1470s. For the binding tools see Strickland Gibson, Early Oxford Bindings, 1903, p. 16, plates III and XXXIII.
Dating is based on the most recent catalogue description: second half of the 15th century, in conjunction with the bookbinding evidence (Reference: The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts) |
| Publication Note | Reference: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire, compiled by W.H. Stevenson (London, 1911), p. 240; The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts; M. Foot, Studies in the History of Bookbinding (1993), 116, n.29 |