The book is held together by bands of gold braid, and fastened by beautiful clasps of richly chased silver gilt, with enamelled red roses. Appended to the boards are five impressions of the Great Seal, each in a silver box, with either a portcullis or a red rose upon it. The seals hang by plaited cords of green and gold.
There are similar books of Henry VII.'s besides this one. A fine instance was shown at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition of Binding in 1891.

It is a Book of Penalties for non-performance of services in the Chapel of Henry VII. at Westminster, and is bound in red velvet, with tassels and silver gilt and enamelled bosses like those just described. It has silver clasps, and four silver boxes containing the seals of the parties to the indenture depend from the lower edge.

On one book, probably once the property of Henry VII., which some

how became separated from the rest, is found his coat-of-arms impressed on the gilt edges a curious and early instance of decorative edge work. A drawing of it was published in Bibliographica, vol. ii. p. 395. It is a Sarum Missal, Rouen, 1497, and was given to Cardinal Pole probably by Queen Mary, and eventually purchased by the British Museum.

Henry VIII. apparently thought much of his library and its proper preservation and extension. He appointed John Leland, the antiquary, to be his library keeper, and gave him a special commission under the Broad Seal to travel and collect all kinds of antiquities and make records of them. Leland acquired, under these powers, many valuable manuscripts from the monasteries, then so ruthlessly being despoiled of their treasures; but, unfortunately, he does not seem to have been able to preserve any of the precious bindings in which many of them were doubtless encased.

There is a considerable amount of documentary evidence concerning the binding of Henry VIlI.'s books. Notices occur in the records of the "Privy Purse Expenses" of payments for velvet and vellum; and these two materials are again largely mentioned in the most interesting account now preserved among the additional manuscripts at the British Museum of the royal printer and binder, "Thomas Berthelett." This account, which is very full, refers to work done during the years 1541-43; and although, so far, no actual book has been identified as being one of those mentioned, yet the bindings we still possess of Henry VIII.'s are so generally of the same kind as those described that there seems little doubt that most, if not all of them, were bound by Berthelet.