[1] Unusually,[citation needed] it was in Anglo-Saxon England soon after it was written, and is now in the collection of Lambeth Palace Library in London.

Information concerning the provenance and history of the manuscript comes from an alliterative Latin inscription which was added on folio 3v, possibly by Koenwald (d. 957/8), later bishop of Worcester.

[4][5] Rearranged in regular metre, the inscription reads: The manuscript must have left the scriptorium of Armagh soon after for England, since it passed into the possession of Æthelstan (r. 924–939), presumably as a diplomatic gift.

After his death, Parker bequeathed all his manuscripts, save the Mac Durnan Gospels, to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

The only known owner thereafter is Brother Howel, a manufacturer of measuring instruments in London, who showed the work to antiquarian and poet Lewis Morris.

The manuscript probably entered the library of Lambeth Palace on the initiative of its director, Andrew Coltee Ducarel, who assumed the post in 1757.

Mark's head is surmounted by an animal which exceeds the frame and which looks more like a bull than a lion, thus corresponding to the ancient symbols of the evangelists as seen in the Book of Durrow.