1-150-050 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lydgate presenting his book to the Earl of Salisbury, 1426, (1843). John Lydgate, poet of Bury St Edmunds, presents his book to Thomas de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. Lydgate's book, Ye Pilgrime, (Pilgrimage of the World, by the commandement of the Earle of Salisburie, 1426), now lost, was commissioned by the earl who was killed at the siege of Orleans in 1428. The pilgrim here is only an emblematic personage, the monk standing beside him and holding one side of the book is Lydgate, who was a friend of Chaucer and was patronised by Henry V. From a manuscript copy of Ye Pilgrime, executed during the reign of Henry VII or Henry VIII (1485-1547), a copy of an older illumination made in 1426. Illustration from Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages from the Seventh to the Seventeenth Centuries, by Henry Shaw, (London, 1843).