The argument about where the remains of Richard III should finally rest rages on a year after they were unearthed and scarcely a week goes by without him being in the news in one way or another. This week it was because archaeologists claim to have found the remains of a chapel commissioned by him in 1483 to commemorate the Battle of Towton (1461) but never completed because of his death at Bosworth two years later. This reminded me of a remarkable manuscript once owned by Richard, which is now at Lambeth Palace Library,  a Book of Hours  (LPL MS 474) said to have been in his tent on the day of the battle in which he lost his life and which gives us an insight into his devotional life.

Richard was not the book’s first owner, however. It seems to have been originally commissioned by a cleric sometime around 1420. According to Anne F. Sutton, it was probably made in Paternoster Row within the circle of the illuminator Herman Scheere.

A professional scribe has added several devotions to the book, the most important of which is the so-called ‘prayer of Richard III’. Written in the first person, it is a prayer for protection against his enemies and for reconciliation with them. It was not composed for him but is a variant of a standard prayer which circulated widely in the fourteenth century and which was used by Emperor Maximillian I and Richard’s contemporary Alexander Prince of Poland, amongst others.

After Richard’s defeat at Bosworth this book seems to have passed to Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, as spoils of war. Richard’s name has been crossed out throughout but one remarkable inscription has been left intact. In the calendar (see top), next to 2 October, Richard has entered the words ‘Hac die natus erat Ricardus Rex Anglie iijus apud Foderingay anno domini Mcc[cclij]’. (‘On this day was born Richard III, King of England, at the house of Foderingay [Fotheringhay] in the year of Our Lord 1452’).

Richard’s Book of Hours continued in use long after his death, even after the Reformation. One later owner has carefully erased every mention of the Pope in the calendar and it was used to record deaths as late as the summer of 1548.

Philip Schwyzer has speculated in his recent book, Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III, that it is this Book of Hours that Shakspeare refers to in the scene in Richard III where Richard is entreated to accept the crown by the people of London. As he enters the scene between two bishops holding a prayerbook, Buckingham says “And, see, a book of prayer in his hand, /True ornaments to know a holy man”. Whether in fact Richard was “a holy man” is not for us to know but let us hope that his final resting place is decided soon.

Further reading

Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs. The Hours of Richard III . Stroud : Alan Sutton for Richard III & Yorkist History Trust, 1990.

Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs. Richard III’s books ideals and reality in the life and library of a medieval prince . Stroud : Sutton Publishing, 1997

Philip Schwyzer. Shakespeare and the remains of Richard III. Oxford University Press, 2013