The manuscript is one of a few securely dated Books of Hours. The date 1408 is given in the colophon (f. 158v) now held in the Chester Beatty Library. The scribe has written "Factum est anno mo cccco viijo quo ceciderunt pontes parisius" [made in the year 1408, when the bridges of Paris toppled]. This is a reference to the severe winter of 1407/08 when the Seine River flooded and three of the city’s main bridges (the Petit Pont, the Grand Pont and the Pont Neuf) collapsed and were washed away.

The earliest known record of the manuscript is its appearance in the sale catalogue of the collection of Sir John Boykett Jarman (1782–1864), auctioned by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge on 13–14 June 1864. The catalogue description (lot 47) asserted that the Book of Hours was "undoubtedly the Prayer Book of the King of France" because its binding bore the royal arms. Jarman is known to have owned the manuscript by at least 1846, when it was among the books damaged after his house was flooded during a severe storm.

At the Jarman sale, the manuscript was purchased for £13 15s by the publisher Edward Arnold. It next appeared at Sotheby's on 6 May 1929 (lot 240), in the sale of Arnold's collection, after which it passed to the Oxford booksellers Chaundy. In September 1929 it was acquired by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875–1968), who dismantled the manuscript and mounted many of its twenty-eight illuminated leaves. Beatty retained a number for his own collection, presented three to Harold K. Hochschild (1892–1981) in 1931, and consigned six to Sotheby's on 22 March 1932 (lots 322–327). Following Beatty's death, the remaining miniatures and other leaves were sold at Sotheby's on 24 June 1969 (lots 58A–58K). Most were purchased by the English booksellers Alan G. Thomas and Folio Fine Art Ltd and were subsequently dispersed to institutional and private collections around the world.

The three leaves acquired for the Dunedin Library Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection came from Alan G. Thomas, cat. 24 (1970), no. 7. The bifolium was bought on 5 August 1970 and the single leaft on 20 October.