Pearl Manuscript
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The Pearl Manuscript, also known as the Gawain manuscript, is an illuminated manuscript produced somewhere in northern England in the late 14th century or the beginning of the 15th century. It is one of the best-known Middle English manuscripts, the only one containing alliterative verse solely, and the oldest surviving English manuscript to have full-page illustrations. It contains the only surviving copies of four of the masterpieces of medieval English literature: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. It has been described as "one of the greatest manuscript treasures for medieval literature", and "the most famous of all romance manuscripts".
The Green Knight at Camelot, folio 94v, and the beginning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, folio 95r
The tempting of Sir Gawain by Bertilak's wife, folio 129r
The dreamer sees the maiden, folio 42r.
Pearl's dreamer sleeps, folio 41r.
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st Baronet of Conington Hall in the parish of Conington in Huntingdonshire, England, was a Member of Parliament and an antiquarian who founded the Cotton library.
A bust of Cotton by Louis-François Roubiliac in the British Museum
Robert Cotton in 1629, the year that he was forced to close the Cotton library by Charles I because the content within the library was believed to be harmful to the interests of the Royalists
Cotton Nero A.x