The Bedford Hours is a French late medieval book of hours.It dates to the early fifteenth century (c. 1410–30); some of its miniatures, including the portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, have been attributed to the Bedford Master and his workshop in Paris. The Duke and Duchess of Bedford gave the book to their nephew Henry VI in 1430. It is in the British Library, catalogued as Add MS 18850.
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John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford in the context of Hundred Years' War (1415–53)
The Lancastrian War was the third and final phase of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It lasted from 1415, when Henry V of England invaded Normandy, to 1453, when the English were definitively defeated in Aquitaine. It followed a long period of peace from the end of the Caroline War in 1389. The phase is named after the House of Lancaster, the ruling house of the Kingdom of England, to which Henry V belonged. The early years of the Lancastrian War were dominated by the forces of the House of Plantagenet, who held the English throne and also claimed that of France. Initial English successes, notably at the Battle of Agincourt, coupled with divisions among the French ruling class, allowed Henry V to win the allegiance of large parts of France. Under the terms of the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, Henry V married the French princess Catherine of Valois and was made regent of the kingdom and heir to the throne of France. A victory on paper was thus achieved by the English, with their claims now having legal standing. Some of the French nobility refused to recognise the agreement, however, and so military conflict continued. Henry V and, after his death, his brother John, Duke of Bedford, brought the English to the height of their power in France, with a Plantagenet crowned in Paris.
John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford in the context of Bedford Master
The Bedford Master was a manuscript illuminator active in Paris during the fifteenth century. He is named for the work he did on two books illustrated for John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford between 1415 and 1435. One is the Bedford Hours, a book of hours in the British Library (Add. MS 18850); the other, the Salisbury Breviary, is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (MS lat. 17294). Another manuscript is in the Royal Collection. The Bedford Master is known to have been the head of a workshop; his chief assistant is known as the Chief Associate of the Bedford Master.
Recent scholarship has tended to move from talking about the "Bedford Master" to the "Bedford Workshop" and even the Bedford Trend, a term introduced by Millard Meiss in 1967, which includes a wider period leading up to the key Bedford works. A "Master of the Bedford Trend" has also been attributed with some works. One possible candidate for the identity of the Bedford Master is "Haincelin of Hagenau" in Alsace, who was recorded in Paris between 1403 and 1424, and was perhaps the father of "Jean Haincelin", active between at least 1438 and 1449, and was perhaps the "Dunois Master" who has been given a group of late Bedford-style manuscripts.