[Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis]

Decoration: 12 large miniatures in arched compartments surrounded by full borders on parti-coloured grounds divided up into areas of liquid gold and unpainted vellum. Decorated borders throughout the manuscript in the outer margins of each page in designs of flowers, fruits, birds, insects, animals, grotesques and acanthus foliage. 6 historiated initials in blue with white tracery on burnished gold grounds. 3-, 2- and 1-line decorated initials and line-fillers in blue, red and gold throughout.

Written in textualis.

Principal contents: ff. 1r-12v Calendar; ff. 13r-18v Gospel sequences; ff. 18v-29v In illo tempore; ff. 31r-34v Obsecro te; ff. 35r-37v O intemerata; ff. 39r-111r Hours of the Virgin; ff. 112r-129v Penitential psalms and litany; ff. 129v-133v Hours of the Cross; ff. 133v-137r Hours of the Holy Spirit; ff. 137r-186v Office of the dead; ff. 187r-220v Prayers (including in French: ff. 187r-192v The Fifteen Joys of the Virgin; ff. 192v-196r The Seven Requests to our Lord; ff. 197r-213r The Fifteen Oes of St Bridget, and indulgences; ff. 213r-215v Adorations to the Virgin).

From the library of Lord Brotherton. He had purchased the manuscript from the London bookseller Chas. J. Sawyer in the 1920s.

See for a fuller description: N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) pp. 34-36. See also: J. A. Symington, The Brotherton Collection: a Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts and Early Printed Books Collected by Edward Allen Baron Brotherton of Wakefield (Leeds, 1931), p. 22.