Life of St Edward the Confessor (MS Ee.3.59)

This is the only surviving copy of an illustrated biography of Edward the Confessor. Written in verse in Anglo-Norman (the French used in medieval England), the manuscript illustrates the complexity and sophistication of English pen and wash narrative art in the thirteenth century. Correspondences between the text and the historical works of Matthew Paris (d. 1259), a chronicle writer and monk of St Albans, suggest very strongly that he was the author.