[Westminster]: Wynkyn de Worde, [c. 1493]
At once manuals of spiritual devotion and symbols of worldly status, Books of Hours were often presented as gifts. This volume, of the Use of Salisbury, belonged first to Sir Thomas Parr, a member of the court of Henry VIII. Some time after his early death in 1517 his widow and children presented it to his brother, Baron William Parr, each writing an inscription pointedly exhorting the recipient to remember them. A note in the hand of Katherine Parr, later the final wife of Henry VIII, reads:
oncle wan you do on thys loke
I pray you reme[m]ber wo wrote thys in your bo[ke]
your louuyinge nys katharin parr.
Inc.4.J.1.2[3570], fol. c4 recto
This 1493 Horae by Wynkyn de Worde is the first printed book of hours for the English market to have survived more or less complete. Medieval Horae were often fashionable devotional accessories, public tokens of piety, power and prosperity. Printing ultimately brought such books within the reach of people of modest means, but this is a luxury item, printed on vellum, with hand-coloured initials. In addition to the usual Latin psalms, litanies and prayers, it includes many English prayers, like the popular Passion devotions, the ‘Fifteen Oes’, published in 1491 by William Caxton under the royal patronage of the Lady Margaret Beaufort.
Horae were often given to friends, dependents and patrons, with inscriptions commemorating these intimate exchanges. This book belonged first to the Henrician courtier Sir Thomas Parr, but after his early death in 1517, his widow gave the book to her brother-in-law, William, future Baron Parr of Horton. At the foot of the finest picture in the book, a crucifixion scene, she reminded William of his duty to his extended family:
Brother et es anolld saying / that owt of syt owt of mynd / but I troste in yow / I chall not fynd et trew / Mawd Parre.
Maud’s three children added their own less pointed endearments. Katherine Parr, destined to be Henry VIII’s last queen, placed hers appropriately under a prayer to her name-saint, Katherine of Alexandria:
Oncle wan you do on thys loke / I pray you remember wo wrote thys in your boke / your louuvynge nys Katheryn parr.
William remained close to Katherine, and when she became queen served as her chamberlain. But in October 1530 he presented this family heirloom to the teenage earl of Surrey, Henry Howard, who had recently joined the household of the King’s bastard son and possible heir, Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond. Parr had fought in Scotland under Surrey’s father, the third duke of Norfolk, and the gift, commemorated in four Latin inscriptions, was clearly intended to consolidate William’s connections to this influential dynasty.
Katherine and William Parr both became protestants, moving far from the Catholic devotional world represented by books like this: so too would Henry, earl of Surrey. But Surrey’s proud flamboyance proved lethal in the murderous paranoia of the dying Henry’s court, and he was executed for treason early in 1547. The book and its inscriptions form a poignant monument to the political perils and religious uncertainties of Henry VIII’s England.
Essay by Professor Eamon Duffy
