A True Copy of the Journal of the High Court of Justice, for the Trial of K. Charles I.

Frontispiece

This full-page frontispiece is prefaced by the following poem:

These lines speak for themselves, describing “Albion” as “Three Nations doom’d t’eternal slavery”, symbolized by the figures crushed under the wheels of the hellish chariot that represents the Interregnum and Cromwell’s Protectorate.

The coat of arms at the top of the chariot is the flag used during the period of Cromwell’s rule of the English Commonwealth.

That gives a pretty clear idea of where this book is coming from. The proceedings of the trial are taken from the official records, but accompanied by a lengthy introduction and copious commentary, leaving the reader in doubt but that the whole thing was nothing short of a heinous murder.

For a text-searchable scan of the whole book, click HERE.

For related texts and further details, click HERE.

A 15th-century manuscript book of hours

Go straight to the scanned PDFs

This week’s book scan is a bit different from my usual fare. It’s a manuscript, it’s from the 15th century, it’s not primarily related to suffering and – because of the limitations of OCR (optical character reader) software – it’s not text-searchable.

But if you have any interest in this kind of thing I think you’ll find it’s worth taking a look! Here are a few sample pages, just to whet your appetite…

This is one of two full-page paintings by an unknown artist. It depicts the Annunciation.
The canonical hours – matins (nighttime), lauds (early morning), prime (first hour of daylight), terce (third hour), sext (noon), nones (ninth hour), vespers (sunset / evening), compline (end of the day) – are introduced by a lavishly-illuminated page like the left-hand page above, which shows the start of prime.


A page from the litany of saints.

For a “guided tour” of this Book of Hours, click here. To see scans of the entire book, click here.