Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Friday 31 March 2023

A collectible Book of Common Prayer


The tradition of printing a special edition of the Book of Common Prayer to mark the forthcoming Coronation has been taken up by the King’s Printer, Cambridge University Press, which oversees the publication of the official 1662 reissue, and in so doing thay have managed to produce not one, but two collectible versions.

There will be the standard celebratory printing but there is also the still more collectible rarity in which the ratification of the Thirty Nine Articles is ascribed not to Queen Elizabeth I but to King Charles, who is consequently described as King of England, France and Ireland, and in the year 1571. Now on his recent State Visit to Germany His Majesty did say he had been around for a long time, but clearly not that long.

The story of this new bibliographic rarity, which  I heard about a few days ago, is now set out by Christopher Hope in the Daily Telegraph at Reprint of the Book of Common Prayer mistakenly makes the King ruler of France


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