University of Virginia Library

A Seventeenth-Century Acknowledgement of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in an Early Catalogue of the Cottonian Library
by
Paul F. Reichardt

The traditional view of the textual history of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (hereafter Gawain) is that it lay undetected among the leaves of what is now called the Pearl Manuscript (folios 37 — 126 of British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x.) until the early nineteenth century. Support for this view is found in catalogues of the Cottonian collection dating from the seventeenth century. The most widely known of these, compiled by the Reverend Thomas Smith, librarian to Sir John Cotton (grandson of Sir Robert Cotton, the bibliophile who assembled the collection which bears his name), was published in 1696 under the title Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Cottonianae. Smith's description of MS Nero A.x. contains this entry:

Use of the singular form poema in this description suggests that Smith believed folios 37 — 126 of the codex contained a single text, and in this belief he was following the treatment accorded the Pearl Manuscript by earlier Cottonian lists and by a catalogue listing books owned by Henry Savile of Banke (now BL MS Harley 1879, dated 1607 or earlier by Watson [14]), from whom Cotton obtained this small volume of alliterative poetry. The Savile list refers to "An owld booke in English verse beginninge Perle pleasant to Princes pay in 4. Limned" (fol. 8v; Watson 68). Long afterward, in 1802, a revised catalogue of the Cottonian collection compiled for the British Museum by Joseph Planta still refers to the Pearl texts in MS Nero A.x. in the singular: "a poem [emphasis mine] in old English on religious and moral subjects; with some paintings rudely executed. . . . Begins 'Perle pleasaunt to prynces paye. . .'" (204).

It is little wonder that Sir Frederick Madden, the first modern scholar to edit Gawain as a separate text, asserts in his 1839 edition of the poem (Syr Gawayne, A Collection of Ancient Romance Poems) that it had fallen into "oblivion" for a considerable period of time as a result of having been "confounded with the previous one[s]" in its codex (299). Sir Israel Gollancz codified this view some fifty years afterward when he wrote of the Pearl texts:

The purpose of this note is to modify the long-accepted notion of Gawain's oblivion prior to the work of nineteenth-century scholars like Madden by pointing out evidence that the poem was recognized by at least one reader some two hundred years earlier. This evidence is found in an early seventeenth-century Cottonian catalogue whose description of the contents of MS Nero A.x. stands in marked contrast to entries for the same volume in other lists of the library's holdings.

To see this particular catalogue in its proper context, it is necessary to take account of the conclusions of Colin G. C. Tite regarding the history of the Cottonian catalogues. Tite has identified no fewer than twenty-three manuscripts containing lists of the Cotton Library's holdings. The earliest of these is Cotton Faustina C.ii. (dated 1600) and the most recent is Planta's 1802 volume (Smith 13 — 14). Among the earlier catalogues on Tite's list is one on folios 1 — 145v of BL MS Harley 6018 and it is this catalogue's description of MS Nero A.x. which has puzzled scholars since it appears to contradict treatments of the same codex in other Cottonian catalogues. Tite believes the date of the MS Harley 6018 list included in its title, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Bibliotheca Roberti Cottoni 1621, refers to the year compilation began, and states, on the basis of the catalogue's inclusion of a volume known to have been acquired in 1623, that the catalogue must have been completed at least two years after this date (146; Smith 13). A date of composition in the 1620s or early 1630s is likely for this list considering the fact that identification of volumes according to the "emperor sequence" (i.e. use of Roman emperor names in the titles assigned to volumes) was added later, in darker ink, in the right margin beside original entries. This feature indicates that the MS Harley 6018 catalogue was annotated several years after it was begun since, as Tite points out, the first catalogue to employ emperor titles was not completed until the late 1630s (147).

Entry 279 of the MS Harley 6018 list contains the following reference: "2. Gesta Arthury regis et aliorum versu anglico." Written beside the four items in this entry by the later hand is the notation "Nero: A: 10". That this identification is no mistake is proved by the remainder of the contents list for the volume: an oration by Justus de Justis (Item 1), a "Tractatus theologus" (Item 3), and an epitaph for Randolphus, abbot of Ramsey Abbey (Item 4). These same three items are present in MS Cotton Nero A.x. as we know it today and therefore only the reference to a narrative concerned with King Arthur seems inconsistent with familiar descriptions of its contents.

This apparent inconsistency may be explained if the item referring to a "Gesta Arthury regis" in the Harley 6018 catalogue is understood as a description of Gawain, and the phrase "aliorum versu anglico" is taken as an allusion to the presence of the other three Pearl poems. This description

of the contents of the Pearl Manuscript would make the Harley 6018 catalogue of the Cottonian Library unique in its use of Gawain rather than Pearl as the reference text for identifying the section of Middle English verse included in MS Nero A.x. But why would this catalogue select Gawain as the focus of its description rather than using Pearl, as did other Cottonian catalogues? Since Pearl stands first among the four Middle English poems found in MS Nero A.x., it would seem simpler, in accordance with the logic employed by its sister catalogues, to cite the opening lines of the initial text to identify this section of the volume.

It is possible however to deduce plausible motives for the preference shown to Gawain in the Harley 6018 catalogue entry. According to Tite, the Harley 6018 catalogue, along with two other early Cottonian catalogues, Faustina C.ii. and Additional 35213, are "the only lists which can, with certainty, be dated to Cotton's lifetime" (147). This point is confirmed by the fact that among the hands detected on the pages of the 1621 catalogue is that of Sir Robert himself (Tite 146 — 147; Sharpe 69 — 70). Cotton's role in compiling the Harley 6018 catalogue may offer a fairly cogent explanation for its reference to Gawain rather than Pearl in the contents list for volume "Nero: A: 10". It is known that Cotton's acquisition of books was influenced by his antiquarian interests and by the patriotic concerns of the age in which he lived, an age in which both Crown and Church were interested in recovering and preserving historical documents that would lend support to contemporary institutions and policies. Cotton's collection included extensive holdings of "ancient" Saxon manuscripts, as well as a "wealth of material for ecclesiastical history; the history of families, offices, and institutions; and the story of the Kings of England from Saxon times" (Sharpe 54). While an old English poem on the subject of King Arthur does not fall directly into the category of historical documents useful to civil or ecclesiastical authorities, it may reflect Cotton's interest in England's legendary past and his sense of patriotism, for Arthur, despite his flaws, was usually associated with the glory of England and with the virtues of those who ruled the Isle. One thing is certain: everything we know about Robert Cotton suggests that his reading interests tended more to history than to theology. This fact alone may help explain why, if he were involved in composing a description of the Pearl Manuscript for the catalogue contained in MS Harley 6018, a reference to an Arthurian narrative would be more likely to appear than one citing the ghostly vision of Pearl.

But assuming Item 2 of Entry 279 in the Harley 6018 catalogue reflects the preference of Robert Cotton himself (or a reader with similar tastes) for Arthurian legend over religious verse raises a second question about the contents being described. Why does Item 2, if indeed it is a reference to Gawain, call the poem a work about King Arthur rather than one about Gawain, as might be expected? In responding to this question, it must be borne in mind that although modern readers may consider any title for Gawain that does not include the hero's name a misnomer, there are no titles of any sort in the surviving manuscript of the Pearl poems. The title

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was coined by Madden for his edition of the poem. Therefore a seventeenth-century reader, coming upon the poem in its manuscript and seeing no title written at the head of the text, would be forced to invent a title appropriate to what was written on its pages. This being the case, it is pertinent to note that a reader of Gawain encounters references to Arthur at least nine times (as a proper name or in the designation "þe king") before Gawain is first mentioned more than one hundred lines into the text. A reader in search of a title for the poem and familiar with its initial stanzas might easily conclude the work was about the legendary king and describe it as such in a brief notation of its subject matter.

A final problem related to the listing of contents for "Nero: A: 10" in the Harley 6018 Cottonian catalogue is that the item describing a story about King Arthur is listed second, despite the fact that in later Cottonian catalogues such as that of Smith, the Pearl Manuscript is normally listed third, the position it occupied when discovered by Madden. It may be noted however that the Cottonian catalogue in BL MS Additional 36682, which follows Harley 6018 by at least a decade, antedates the authoritative listing of Thomas Smith by some sixty years, and is the first list to employ the emperor sequence to identify volumes, also places the Pearl poems second in the list of contents for MS Nero A.x., though it does identify the poems by reference to Pearl rather than Gawain: "2. Vetus poema Anglicanum, in quo sub insomnii figmento multa ad religionem et mores spectantia explicantur" (fol. 114). Tite speculates that the catalogue in Additional 36682 "may have been started before Sir Robert's death" in 1631, and other commentators, including Madden, attribute it to Richard James, Robert Cotton's own librarian (xlvii). Since the Pearl poems constitute the third text in the Cotton Nero A.x. volume as we know it today, one of two hypotheses must be employed to resolve this problem. The first is that the volume was split and its contents rearranged or altered sometime between 1621 and the 1630s. However there is no reference to such an alteration in the records of the Cottonian collection nor does the appearance of the volume itself provide physical evidence to substantiate this view. Nevertheless, the idea that the Pearl Manuscript was not included in the original contents of Cotton Nero A.x. seems to have been accepted by eminent scholars of the history of the Cottonian collection. For example, Andrew G. Watson has written that ". . . other items in Nero A.x. are listed in Cotton's 1621 catalogue (Harley 6018, fol. 112v) but the present item [i.e. the 'owld book in English verse beginning Perle pleasant to Princes pay' referred to in the Savile catalogue] is not mentioned" (68). Similarly, C. E. Wright concluded that in MS Harley 6018 "neither the Beowulf MS (Vitellius A.xv) nor the Pearl and Sir Gawain MS (Nero A.x.) are identifiable" (199).

An alternative and I believe preferable hypothesis for explaining the list of contents for "Nero A:x" in Harley 6018 is that this catalogue's sequence is inaccurate and that this same inaccuracy was appropriated uncritically a decade later by the Additional 36682 listing of Cotton's books. Eventually, however, it was noticed that items two and three in the entry

were reversed and the error was corrected by the time of Smith's catalogue of 1696. In my view, the hypothesis of an inaccurate ordering of contents for MS Nero A.x. in the Harley 6018 and Additional 36682 catalogues offers a simple and straightforward explanation of this discrepancy, one which is also fully consistent with the physical evidence of the MS Nero A.x. volume itself and the history of the Cottonian collection as we know it. According to this hypothesis, the Pearl poems were indeed present in the volume when the catalogue of 1621 was compiled but were described by that catalogue in a manner which effectively concealed their presence from scholars who expected to find a reference to the text of Pearl.

All things considered, the evidence of Entry 279 of the Cottonian catalogue in MS Harley 6018 strongly suggests that the text of Gawain was not entirely unknown in the seventeenth century. At least one reader of that period, whose identity is inextricably bound to the composition of this catalogue's entry for "Nero A:x", seems to have recognized that the alliterative poetry in this volume consisted of more than one text. Since Robert Cotton seems to have participated in the compilation of this early catalogue of his collection, it is quite possible that he is the source of this acknowledgement of Gawain's existence. Whatever the source, however, the reference to a "Gesta Arthury regis" in this early Cottonian catalogue apparently anticipated by some two hundred years Madden's encounter with Gawain. But, to give Madden his due, it must be remembered that it was he, and not his seventeenth-century precursor, who possessed the learning and persistence required to bring the text of this intriguing poem to the attention of a contemporary audience for whom its original manuscript was no more than a museum piece.

Works Cited

• Gollancz, Sir Israel. Pearl: An English Poem of the Fourteenth Century. London: David Nutt, 1891.
• Madden, Sir Frederic. Syr Gawayne, A Collection of Ancient Romance Poems. London: Bannatyne Club, 1839.
• Planta, Joseph. A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library, Deposited in the British Museum. British Library Department of Manuscripts Pamphlet 2408. London: British Museum, 1802.
• Sharpe, Kevin. Sir Robert Cotton 1586 — 1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979.
• Smith, Thomas. Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library 1696 (Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Cottonianae). Edited C. G. C. Tite. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1984.
• Tite, Colin G. C. "The Early Catalogues of the Cottonian Library." British Library Journal 6.2 (1980):144 — 157.
• Watson, Andrew G. The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke. London: Bibliographical Society, 1969.
• Wright, C. E. "The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the Formation of the Cottonian Library." The English Library Before 1700: Studies in Its History. Eds. Francis Wormald and C. E. Wright. London: Athlone, 1958. 176 — 212.