The manuscript is notable for containing single versions of important poems such as the Alliterative Morte Arthure and Sir Perceval of Galles, and gives evidence of the variegated literary culture of fifteenth-century England.
[2] The variety of genres found in the manuscript is deemed to be representative of what Edmund Spenser may have been influenced by in composing The Faerie Queene.
The third section, consisting of quire q, contains Liber de diversis medicinis, a collection of medical advice and recipes.
It is described as "the usual mixture of genuine therapeutic lore and humbug" and includes a recipe "for to gare a woman say what þu askes hir.
[13] Fredell states that the PA was prepared for the richest illustrative program in the manuscript, which Thornton for a variety of reasons (financial and political) was not able to execute; he may not have had the money or the available resources in his area to complete it.
[14] Robert Thornton was a member of the landed gentry in Yorkshire as well as an amateur scribe and collector.
Sir Percyvelle, for instance, was originally composed in the fourteenth century in a north-east Midland dialect, and one version would have traveled north to be copied by Thornton while another traveled south to be referenced by Geoffrey Chaucer in Sir Thopas.
[19] The manuscript is also seen as evidence of a change in religiosity taking place during the fifteenth century, when a broader dispersion of religious material began to make "priestly mediation" unnecessary.
Its inclusion of a sermon by the Benedictine monk John Gaytryge is considered "evidence of lay people taking responsibility for teaching themselves their 'catechism'....The laity were increasingly able to instruct themselves.