The manuscript library at Holkham is widely recognised as one of the most significant collections still in private hands. It consists of some 550 items, deriving chiefly from the libraries of lawyer and parliamentarian Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) and his eighteenth-century successor, the builder of Holkham, Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester (1697-1759). Chief Justice Coke's book include many texts on law, heraldry and religion, and are mainly of British origin; these will be catalogued in volume 2. Thomas Coke's library, however, was acquired through a series of large-scale purchases and gifts on his Grand Tour (1712-1718), and includes examples of the whole range of European book production from the twelfth to the seventeenth century. Here vol. 1], the heart of the collection - manuscripts made in Italy in the Middle Ages and the age of humanism - is properly described for the first time.