The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of ‘Merrie England’

One of the things I most look forward to seeing relocated and freshly exhibited at the new British Library near Kings Cross is that much loved illuminated manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter, with its famous marginal scenes of medieval work and play. There are many reasons why this particular manuscript has played such an important role in the English national consciousness – most obvious is the superb quality of its illumination. The naturalistic detail and inventive fantasy are the credit of its major artist who, inspired by the words of the Psalms, started work on the manuscript in the late 1320s but left it mysteriously unfinished, even before the death of his patron, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, in 1345. Two aspects of the manuscript’s more recent history show how it came to exemplify ‘Merrie England’ – the idea of an English ‘golden age’ of a structured but stable society based on shared community values. First was its scandal-ridden sale on the London art market in 1929 and, second, the long tradition in which historians have employed it to present a mirror, or picture-window, onto the English past.