The Holkham Bible (London, British Library, Additional MS 47682) is an illustrated collection of biblical and apocryphal stories in Norman French.

The Holkham Bible is a biblical picture book consisting of 42 parchment leaves bearing 231 pen-and-ink drawings, usually two per page.

[1] Occupying the manuscript’s opening leaf is a miniature depicting a friar standing next to a seated scribe or limner with a banderole or ‘speech scroll’ extending from each man’s mouth.

[2] The scrolls show the friar saying “Ore feres bien e nettement car mustre serra a riche gent” (‘Now do [it] well and thoroughly for it will be shown to important people’), to which the artisan replies “Si frai voyre e Deux me doynt vivere Nonkes ne veyses un autretel Liuere” (‘I will do so truly, if God grants me to live; never will you see another such book’).

[6] Although of English origin, the manuscript was in continental Europe by 1816 when William Roscoe, writing to Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester, of Holkham, reported that it had just returned to England from the Continent; over a century later, M.R.