Shortly after the suppression of Christ Church, which, in all probability, inherited the treasures of Reculver, the Utrecht Psalter, together with its incorporated charter, fell into the hands of the Talbot family; and in Mr. Bond’s report on the manuscript he said that the name Mary Talbot could, with some difficulty, be deciphered on the lower margin of folio 60b, in a sixteenth century hand.  Various suggestions have been made in regard to this name, but in Mr. Birch’s opinion—­and here there is good reason for following him—­it belonged to the wife or daughter of “Master Talbot of Norwich, a most ingenious and industrious antiquary.”  He made a collection of rare manuscripts, most of which are now in Corpus Christi College at Cambridge, and it was from this collection that the Utrecht Psalter passed into Sir Robert Cotton’s possession, but whether by gift or purchase is not recorded.

The manuscript is entered in the catalogue of the library written by Cotton himself in 1621, under the press-mark Claudius C 7, but it is not to be found in any subsequent catalogue.  An entry occurs among the Notes of such books as haze been lent out by Sir Robert Cotton to divers persons, and are abroad in their hands att this daye, the 15th of January 1630, which entry is to the effect that the Psalter was lent “to my lord the Earle of Arundel.”  Birch gave it up as lost to the Cotton library from the time that it passed into Lord Arundel’s hands; but he must have been unaware of the existence of Smith’s own copy of his printed catalogue, which contains his manuscript notes of books borrowed from the Cotton collection, and in which these words are written “Borrowed by Mr. Ashmole, on the 17th February 1673, Claudius, C. 7.”  Smith’s folio catalogue, published in 1696, has the word Deest, marking its absence from the library.  Nothing further can be discovered till 1718, when the book appears to have become the property of Monsieur de Ridder, a Dutchman, who presented it to the University of Utrecht where it still remains.* Sir Robert Cotton’s signature is on the first page.

The History, Art, and Paleography of the Utrecht Psalter, by W. de Gray Birch, F.R.S.L., Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum.

The great charm of this manuscript, a facsimile of which is to be seen in the Cottonian library, lies in its pen-and-ink illustrations, as forcible and appealing as are the scenes of the Last judgment on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa.  Among the Harleian MSS., moreover (No. 603), there is an illuminated Psalter so like it, that it seems impossible that the artist should not have had the Utrecht Psalter before him as he drew; unless, as Sir Edward Thompson supposes, the older manuscript is itself a copy of a still more ancient one, which leads him to infer that other versions of this Psalter were in existence in England at an early date.  This would account also for the Eadwine Psalter at Cambridge, a twelfth-century imitation of the Harleian manuscript.  Neither of these Psalters can be described as an absolute copy of the Utrecht Psalter.