Book of Hours of Richard III (Lambeth Palace Library MS 474)
Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis (Lambeth MS 474)
Deus, creator omnium rerum, te supplico ut me protegere digneris in omnibus operibus meis.
Our renderingGod, creator of all things, I beseech you to deign to protect me in all my works.
What it is
Lambeth Palace Library MS 474 is among the most intimate surviving royal devotional documents of the Plantagenet era: a standard London-made Book of Hours of the Sarum Use which Richard III adopted after his coronation in 1483 and made deeply personal through his own additions. He inserted at least ten pages of new devotional text, including a Collect of St Ninian — a saint for whom Richard had a documented personal devotion, elevating his feast at Middleham — and the celebrated 'Prayer of King Richard,' a penitential prayer seeking protection against enemies and reconciliation with them, marked in the manuscript with the phrase 'proprium regis Ricardi.' The manuscript was digitised by Leicester Cathedral following Richard's reinterment in 2015. Its standard contents open with the Hours of the Virgin (Sarum Use), Penitential Psalms, Gradual Psalms, Litany, and Office of the Dead.
Why it still matters
Richard III's personal prayer — confessing unworthiness, asking for clarity of mind, steadfastness, and protection under God in desperate circumstances — is one of the most accessible and human royal prayers to survive from medieval England, and its language of trusting God amid enmity remains immediately usable in private devotion today.
Kept alongside
Psalter (for the Education of Giovanni de' Medici)
The documented use of the Latin Psalter as the basis of young Giovanni de' Medici's religious instruction by his mother Clarice Orsini is one of the most precisely attested Medici devotional education episodes. When Poliziano attempted to teach the Medici boys using Homer and classical authors, Clarice expelled him from the villa at Cafaggiolo (c. 1479) and substituted the Latin Psalter, insisting on traditional Catholic instruction. Giovanni later became Pope Leo X, giving the episode retrospective significance; it is documented through Poliziano's own letters and subsequent Renaissance scholarship. The underlying text — the Psalter itself — was the universal prayer book of medieval and Renaissance Christendom and carries the highest possible devotional relevance independent of this particular episode.
English Primer (The Prymer)
Prymer or Lay Folks' Prayer Book
The English Primer ('Prymer') was the standard lay devotional book in England from the 14th to 16th centuries, used by children and adults alike to learn both literacy and prayer. Beginning as a first reading book combining the alphabet, Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Creed, it grew to include the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Fifteen Gradual Psalms, the Litany of the Saints, and the Office of the Dead. Chaucer's reference in the Prioress's Tale (c. 1386) to a seven-year-old boy learning his 'primer' confirms its role in children's formation, and Eleanor of Castile purchased 'seven primers' in Cambridge in 1289 for royal household use. The royal culmination was Henry VIII's King's Primer (1545), principally compiled by Archbishop Cranmer and prescribed by royal proclamation as the only permitted primer in England.
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Commissioned c. 1412 by Jean de France, Duc de Berry — son of King John II and brother of Charles V — this is the supreme surviving example of Valois private devotion in manuscript form. It contains the canonical hours structured around the Hours of the Virgin, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Ghost, Penitential Psalms, Office of the Dead, and additional offices and masses, all framed by the famous calendar illuminations depicting the labours of the months. The duke used it for daily private prayer in his châteaux, and it was left unfinished at his death in 1416, completed only in 1485–1489 by Jean Colombe for Charles I of Savoy. Its unmatched luxury simultaneously signals sincere personal piety and the Valois use of devotional objects as instruments of dynastic prestige.