Henry Bone made a notable success during his career of producing historical sequences of portrait enamels for exhibition and sale. This enamel is from the series of English Sovereigns and Queens from Edward III to Queen Victoria which was completed by Henry Pierce Bone after his father's death in 1834, building on a group of 11 historical copies by Henry Bone dating from as far apart as 1815 and 1831. To this were added 22 of his own enamels, all but one being completed in 1835 – 7. These were then united and presented for sale as a group of 33 with a 'Catalogue of a Series of Portraits of the Sovereigns of England from the Earliest Period … to the Present Time; together with several of the Queens Consort Painted in Enamel by the late Henry Bone R.A. … and Henry Pierce Bone Enamel Painter to Her Majesty The Queen Dowager & H.R.H. The Duchess of Kent' (City of Westminster Archives, D86/fol. 16). Prince Albert purchased the series in 1843, paying two instalments each of £200 in July and October for Henry Bone's 'Enamels of the Kings & Queens'.

The image of Edward V is derived from an illumination from The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 265). In this representation dating from November/December 1477, Edward, Prince of Wales, is shown in the foreground, as a witness with his mother the Queen to the presentation by Earl Rivers of the first ever volume printed by William Caxton in England to his father Edward IV. Bone was forced to elaborate this slight depiction of the prince, as the manuscript is virtually the only formal portrait of Edward V.

Signed, dated and inscribed on the counter-enamel in red paint: Edward 5th / London May 1838 / Painted by Henry Pierce Bone R.A. Enamel / Painter to the Queen Dowager / & the Duchess of Kent From an / Illumination in a MS in the / Library of His Grace the Archbishop / of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace and in ink on a label on the reverse (erroneously): Painted by Henry Bone Nov […] / Enamel Painter to His [Majesty] / After the Original in the [Collection] / of His Grace the Duke of [Bedford] / Woburn.