The manuscript was produced over several stages, including new material that was added as the manuscript passed from owner to owner. The origins of the manuscript are not known with certainty, nor is there agreement on its initial patron. The inclusion of certain heraldic symbols in its decorative programme may suggest an original patronage in the French royal family, perhaps the dauphin, Louis of Guyenne. Or this first stage in production might have taken place later, after Louis's death, the heraldic symbols having no immediate reference to patronage, but simply being part of the standard iconographic programme of the workshop. In the early 1420s the manuscript was in the possession of John of Lancaster, the Duke of Bedford and regent of France on behalf of his nephew Henry VI from 1422 until his death in 1435. In 1423 he gave the manuscript to his wife Anne of Burgundy as a wedding present. Personalizing additions to the manuscript's illumination that commemorate its ownership by the Duke and Duchess of Bedford include two large portrait miniatures, showing John kneeling before St George and Anne of Burgundy kneeling before St Anne. In 1430 Anne gave the manuscript as a Christmas present to the nine-year-old Henry VI, who was staying with the Bedfords in Rouen before his coronation as king of France. This gift was memorialized in the manuscript itself, on f. 256r, in an inscription made at the duke's request, written by John Somerset, Henry's tutor and personal physician. It is possible that it was in preparing the book as a gift to Henry that the portrait miniatures of the Bedfords were added, along with other additions to the programme of illumination. Later owners include King Henry II of France and his wife Catherine de' Medici, and Frances Worsley, wife of Sir Robert Worsley, 4th baronet of Appuldurcombe. Edward Harley probably purchased the manuscript from Frances Worsley, but he did not will it to his widow with the rest of the Harley collection, instead bequeathing it directly to his daughter, Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, who sold it in 1786. It then came into the ownership of the noted book collector, Thomas Weld owner of a most sumptuous library at Lulworth Castle, containing a number of exceptional rarities, including the Luttrell Psalter and Shakespeare's history textbook, Holinshed's Chronicles 1587 2nd edition. Thomas Weld's Ex Libris book plates all bear the family motto on the plates' ribbon "nil sine numine". The manuscript was purchased from the Weld family by the British Museum in 1852, and currently forms part of the British Library's collection of Additional manuscripts.
Contents
The contents of the Bedford Hours can be divided into several major sections of content normal for a conventional book of hours, with the later addition of three smaller sections of supplementary material, mostly miniatures. These contents are:
prayers and portraits of John, Duke of Bedford and his wife Anne, Duchess of Bedford : includes also the inscription by John Somerset, recording the gift of the manuscript to Henry VI
Suffrages to the saints, commemorations of saints, special masses
full-page miniature depicting the legend of the Fleurs-de-lis and its presentation to King Clovis
Illumination
The programme of decoration in the Bedford Hours is an outstanding example of late medieval illumination. The artists responsible for the manuscript have not been identified with certainty, but are collectively known as the "Bedford Workshop", and the head artist is likewise known as the "Bedford Master".
The hands of the Bedford Master and the Bedford Workshop have been identified in other manuscripts from this period, including the Salisbury Breviary, also owned by the Duke of Bedford. The illumination of the Bedford Hours is also related to that of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, illuminated by the Limbourg brothers. It is possible that some of the Bedford Hours miniatures were based on images in the Très Riches Heures. Other products of the Bedford Workshop include:
