Three Books of Hours and a Roman Missal in the News

It seems lately that announcements about prayer books and their owners and provenance are attempting to inform us more about their owners and their significance. The fact that Queen Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn owned and prayed with copies of the same edition of the Book of Hours published in Paris circa 1527 by printer Germain Hardouyn has been the centerpiece of an exhibition at Hever Castle (Queen Catherine's copy was on loan from the Morgan Library in New York City).

More recently there was the news that Thomas Cromwell owned a copy of the same Book of Hours that's included in Holbein's portrait, as the Smithsonian Magazine reported:

Through her research, McCaffrey [Kate McCaffrey, who identified and researched the provenance of the two queens' books] learned of the existence of a third copy of the Book of Hours—one donated to Cambridge by Dame Anne Sadleir in August 1660. When Hever’s curatorial team viewed the copy, Palmer pointed out its resemblance to the volume lying on a green tablecloth in the famous portrait, which Holbein painted between 1532 and 1533.

Palmer, Emmerson and McCaffrey began searching for more evidence to confirm the connection. They looked into the Cambridge book’s provenance, tracing its ownership from Cromwell to Sadleir, whose husband was the grandson of Cromwell’s secretary Ralph Sadleir (also spelled Sadler). The trio then shared their research with leading experts like Borman, who examined their findings and came to the same conclusion.

Previously, researchers had paid little attention to the Cambridge copy, which was known as the Hardouyn Hours after its printer. As Emmerson tells Artnet’s Richard Whiddington, scholars studying this era tend to focus more on handwritten texts than printed books. Additionally, the book “has remained uncleaned for many decades, with dirt and tarnish masking the finer details of the silver-gilt binding.”

I wonder about the attempts to use the fact that two of Henry VIII's queens and Thomas Cromwell used the same edition of a prayer book as an insight into their relationships, as the same article from the Smithsonian website quotes two of the specialists involved:

“This book of devotional prayers is remarkable for its unusually grand binding, covered with velvet, jewels and highly decorated silver gilt borders, all of which date from the time it was printed and illuminated,” says Nicolas Bell, a librarian at Cambridge’s Trinity College, in the statement. “It has been enormously exciting to position this luxurious creation in the very center of the court of Henry VIII, where we know that both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn owned copies of the very same edition.” . . .

The newly identified prayer book “gives us a little window into” the everyday lives of three giants of Tudor history, Emmerson tells the Times. “We often see them as adversaries, but they were also in each other’s company. They had to get along for propriety’s sake. It’s a surprising connection between these otherwise warring individuals.”

I don't think it's that surprising at all: the Book of Hours was the prayer book used at the time by pious laity. Why would the three of them praying with the same book mean they were getting "along for propriety's sake"? Do the curators imagine them meeting in a chapel and praying an hour antiphonally? How common was ownership of this particular printed edition? Has that been considered while highlighting these connections? As the MET in New York City notes:

A century later, the invention and adoption of printing made books of hours even more accessible to a wider audience, and a press like that of the Hardouyn family (89.27.4, fols. 5v–6r) made copies by the dozen or more. However numerous and easy to produce, the widespread printed books of hours never attained the appeal of the finest handmade manuscript copies, each one not only a functional prayer book but a unique work of art.

More on mass-produced Books of Hours here.

Besides, as the Smithsonian story comments, the inclusion of Cromwell's Book of Hours may have a different, non-religious or devotional purpose: "The book’s inclusion in the Holbein portrait may allude to Cromwell’s recent appointment as Master of the Jewels [in April 1532]". And as the Tower of London website notes:

It was almost certainly to celebrate his appointment as Master of the Jewels that Cromwell commissioned Hans Holbein, the most celebrated artist of the age, to paint his portrait in around 1532-33.

It wasn't to show Cromwell's sentimental attachment to that Book of Hours, as Owen Emmerson avers: it was to announce that he was moving up at Court--he's not looking that jeweled book, he's displaying it!

Now comes the news that Father John Huddleston's Roman Missal has been identified and obtained for Moseley Old Hall in Staffordshire, stressing its connection to the relationship between the Benedictine priest who sheltered the then King of Scotland after defeat at the Battle of Worcester and King Charles II's deathbed conversion in 1685:

Father John Huddleston was a Benedictine priest who resided at Moseley Old Hall during the time that Charles II sought refuge here in 1651.

When Charles arrived at Moseley on 8th September 1651, Father Huddleston gave him shelter in his own first-floor bedroom and it is believed that during his time here, Charles consulted a collection of Father Huddleston's books, with the missal likely to have been one of them.

When Charles II returned to England as king in 1660, he made Father Huddleston chaplain to his mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, and then later to his wife, Catherine of Braganza. Father Huddleston was held in high regard by the king, so much so that in 1685, as King Charles II lay dying in Whitehall Palace in London, Father Huddleston was summoned to his bedside to hear the king’s confession, administer the Eucharist and receive him into the Catholic Church.

Whether or not King Charles II of Scotland was likely to have read or prayed with Father Huddleston's Roman Missal in 1651 seems uncertain to me. If Father Huddleston was using the Roman Missal for daily Mass, etc., it might not have been available to Charles to consult, unless he was attending the Masses. Father Huddleston might indeed have had this Roman Missal with him when he received Charles into the Church, but that detail/provenance is not mentioned.

As for Father Huddleston after that famous deathbed conversion, the old Catholic Encyclopedia has these details:

On the accession of James II, Huddleston continued to reside with the Queen Dowager at Somerset House. Shortly before his death his mind failed and he was placed in the charge of "the Popish Lord Feversham", one of the few persons present at Charles II's reconciliation to the Church, who managed his affairs as trustee. To this arrangement is probably due the unusual circumstance that the probate of his will was obtained the day before his funeral. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary le Strand (Parish Register, MS.). 

Image Credit (public domain) Holbein's portrait of Thomas Cromwell

Image Credit (public domain): Portrait of Dom John Huddleston O.S.B. (1608-98), after a portrait by Jacob Huysmans