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Detailed record for Harley 2887


Part 1	ff. 21-26v, 29-32, 34-54v, 59-129v
	Title		Book of Hours, Use of Sarum ('The Hours of the Earls of Ormond')
	Origin		England, S. E. ( London)
	Date		c. 1460 (before 1467)
	Language		Latin
	Script		Gothic
	Decoration		7 large historiated initials with full foliate borders including birds and hybrid figures, in colours and gold (ff. 29, 59, 68, 80, 97v, 105v, 113). 10 large decorated foliate initials with three-sided foliate borders, in colours and gold (ff. 34, 43, 45v, 47v, 49, 50, 51v, 64, 66, 124v). Small initials (2 lines) in gold on red and blue grounds. Small initials (1 line) in gold with blue pen-flourishing or in blue with red pen-flourishing. Decorated catchwords.
	Dimensions in mm		275 x 185 (190 x 120)

Part 2	ff. 6v-19v, 27, 33
	Title		Added prayers and miniatures
	Origin		England, S. E. ( London)
	Date		c. 1480 - c. 1500
	Language		Latin
	Script		Gothic
	Decoration		4 full-page miniatures on inserted single leaves, in colours and gold (ff. 6v, 8v, 27v, 33v). 1 small miniature, in colours and gold (f. 12v). 7 large and small historiated or inhabited initials, in colours and gold (ff. 7 (x2), 7v, 9, 10, 12, 12v). Small initials (2 lines) in gold on blue grounds, decorated with white drawings of flowers, human heads, etc. (ff. 9v-12). Small initials (2 lines) in gold on red and blue grounds (ff. 14-18v). Small initials (1 line) in gold on red or blue grounds. Small initials (1 line) in gold with blue pen-flourishing or in blue with red pen-flourishing. Small initials (1 line) in plain red or blue. Line-fillers decorated in gold and blue.
	Dimensions in mm		275 x 185 (190 x 120)

Part 3	ff. 55v-58
	Title		Added miniatures
	Origin		England, S. E. ( London)
	Date		last quarter of the 15th century
	Language		n/a
	Script		n/a
	Decoration		6 full-page miniatures, composed of 5 small miniatures each, in colours and gold (ff. 55v-58).
	Dimensions in mm		275 x 185 (205 x 140)

Part 4	f. 3v-6
	Title		Added miniature for an inscribed prayer in English
	Origin		Netherlands, N.
	Date		c. 1500 - c. 1510
	Language		English
	Script		Gothic cursive
	Scribe		Added by a non-professional hand.
	Artists		Attributed to the group of the Master of the Dark Eyes (James Marrow cited in Scot 1996).
	Decoration		1 full-page miniature including heraldic arms, in colours and gold (f. 3v).
	Dimensions in mm		275 x 185 (195 x 140)

Part 5	f. 28r-v
	Title		Added miniature
	Origin		France, N. W.? (Rouen?)
	Date		c. 1500 - c. 1510
	Language		n/a
	Script		n/a
	Decoration		1 full-page miniature, in colours and gold (28v). Underdrawing for the same miniature (f. 28).
	Dimensions in mm		275 x 185 (265 x 255)

Part 6	f. 2
	Title		Obits of the Butler family, Earls of Ormond
	Origin		England, S. E. ( London)
	Date		c. 1500 - c. 1510
	Language		Latin
	Script		Gothic cursive
	Decoration		Small initials in red with purple pen-flourishing or in blue with red pen-flourishing.
	Dimensions in mm		275 x 185 (205 x 115)

Official foliation		ff. 130 (f. 1 is a medieval parchent flyleaf [pasted to a paper leaf]; + 1 unfoliated original parchment leaf after f. 20; + 2 paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end)
Form		Parchment codex
Binding		BM/BL in-house. Rebound in 1983.
Provenance		A member of the Gower family, London, by 1467: the birth of Annas Gower is inscribed as having taken place on 25 August, 1467, in the parish of St Michael's 'in Croked layn in Tourstret (f. 1v), and further inscriptions relating to the family (f. 130v) (see discussion Scott 1968). A member of the Butler family, the earls of Ormond, c. 1500, perhaps Thomas Butler, 7th earl (d. 1515): inscribed obits (f. 2) and heraldic arms (f. 28v). Inscribed prayers in professional and non-professional hands, early 16th century (ff. 20r-v, 130). The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts. Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta, née Cavendish Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d.1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.
Notes		Traces of pilgrim badges (f. 27v).
Select bibliography		A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1808-12), II, no. 2887. Walter de Gray Birch and Henry Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations: An Introduction to the Study of Illustrated Manuscripts (London: Bagster and Sons, 1879), p. 15. Christopher Wordsworth and Henry Littlehales, The Old Service-Books of the English Church, 2nd edn (London: Methuen & Co., 1910), p. 59. Anglo-Flemish Art under the Tudors (London: British Museum, 1954), no. 23 [unpublished exhibition catalogue]. Kathleen L. Scott, 'A Mid-Fifteenth Century English Illuminating Shop And Its Customers', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 31 (1968), 170-96 (pp. 171-82, pl. b). Eberhard König, ‘A Leaf from a Gutenberg Bible Illuminated in England’, British Library Journal, 9 (1983), 32-50 (fig. 5). Bert Cardon, 'Het Speculum Humanae Salvationis manuscript Harley 2838 in de British Library te Londen, een handschrift omstreeks 1500 in Engeland verlucht door een miniaturist uit de Nederlanden?', in Miscellanea Neerlandica: opstellen voor Dr Jan Deschamps ter gelegenheid van zijn zeventigste verjaardag, ed. by Elly Cockx-Indestege and Frans Hendrickx, 3 vols (Louvain: Peeters, 1987), I, pp. 441-63 (p. 461 n. 44). Kathleen L. Scott, ‘Design, Decoration and Illustration’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 31-64 (p. 57 n. 34). Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), no. 109. Janet Backhouse, Illumination from Books of Hours (London: British Library, 2004), no. 18.