Selden Carol Book

[2][3] The inclusion of Deo Gracias Anglia referencing Henry V's victory at Agincourt in 1415 gives an indication of the date of composition of the carols.

[6] Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400-1550 also suggests Worcester, but adds that it may have been copied there for St. Mary Newarke College, a now-lost collegiate church in Leicester.

[2] Timothy Glover concludes that while it was created at a monastery, the two secular drinking songs at the end of the manuscript suggests it was unlikely to have been used in a liturgical setting.

The text is handwritten in the Cursiva Anglicana script of the period, a form of writing initially used for letters and legal documents which soon became the most commonly used script for copying English literary texts of the period, for example the manuscripts of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland.

[9] The 'burdens', a type of refrain performed at the beginning of the song and between verses, are the earliest example of a carol manuscript explicitly directing what it now known as a 'chorus'.