[FORE-EDGE PAINTING] THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENTS.: [Bound with:] A New Version of The Psalms of David, Fitted to The Tunes Used in Churches. [With:] Proper Lessons to be read at Morning & Evening Prayer on the Sundays and other Holy-Days throughout the year. [The latter bound with:] The New Testament. (Bo

2 vols., 48vo, ff. [287; 343]. Contemporary dark green paste grain morocco, boards bordered with a double-blind rule, spines divided by blind rules and lettered in gilt, all edges gilt, housed in the original black morocco vertical slipcase with tabbed lid. A plain but attractively bound pair of miniature devotional volumes.

Fore-Edge Painting

Vol I. Basingwerk Monastery.

Ranulf de Gernon was earl of Chester from 1129-1153. He offered Basingwerk to monks of the Norman abbey of Savigny, which enjoyed a briefly fashionable status in Norman Britain. The first monks from Savigny probably lived within the protective confines of a nearby Norman fortress known as Hen Blas.

The Savigniac order merged with the Cistercian order in 1147 and then a decade later the abbey was granted to Buildwas Abbey in Shropshire. In that same year, Henry II effectively re-founded the abbey, around the time the monks moved from Hen Blas to Basingwerk, at what is now called Greenfield.

Vol II. Conway Castle.

The site was occupied by a Cistercian monastery favoured by the Welsh princes, as well as the location of one of the palaces (called llys) of the Welsh princes. From Conwy: "the oldest structure is part of the town walls, now all incorporating the still standing Conway Castle.