This manuscript, now known as the Queen Mary Psalter, embellished with over one thousand images, is one of the most extensively illustrated Psalters ever produced in Western Europe. Confiscated at the border by a custom official Baldwin Smith, it was presented by him to the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor in 1553, the year she ascended to the throne. The image shows the tree of Jesse London (?), c. 1310–20
This manuscript was written and illuminated in Northern France (Arras?) and enhanced with two new images and heraldry for a member of the Bohun’s family (probably Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton, d. 1373). Inherited by Eleanor de Bohun, the wife of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the book was probably seized on behalf of Richard II at the Duke’s arrest for treason in 1397 (see Royal 19 B. xiii).
Edward IV owned this indistinctive collection of medical and instructional texts before his accession to the throne. A note on one of the front flyleaves refers to him as the Count of March ('Iste liber co[n]stat Edwardo comiti / marchie p[rim]ogenit[us] fili[us] ducis / Eboraci'). The manuscript also bears the Westminster inventory number 'no. 806' (f. 3) confirming its continuous royal ownership.