At the top of two folios in a 15th-century manuscript, two rhyming lines of Middle English are written in dark red ink:

Yll mowth he spede: where that he go,
That leuyth this boke: to frende or to foo.
Amen.
May he fare ill, wherever he goes,
That leaves this book to friend or to foe.
Amen.

These words were inscribed by William Wymondham, an Augustinian canon at the Priory of Kirby Bellars, which sits just outside Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. Wymondham clearly treasured this book, of which he was both the scribe and the owner. On a folio near the beginning of the manuscript, he writes in large-lettered Latin that he would rather lose all his other possessions than this one book. 

The texts contained within the manuscript, which is now held at the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge, may seem unexpected reading matter for a man of religion in the 15th century. Its contents include texts on esoteric philosophy and chiromancy (palm reading), historical and medical notes, poems and,