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 also been argued that it was produced for the Stanley family by a scribe whose dialect locates him to south-east Cheshire or north-east Staffordshire.

[8][9][10] In recent years several scholars have reidentified the scribe's dialect as Yorkshire, and Joel Fredell has pointed out stylistic and thematic similarities with illuminated manuscripts produced in York which suggest that the illustrations in Cotton Nero A X/2 were drawn and painted there in the first two decades of the 15th century.

Edward Wilson has speculated that it was held by the Stanley family;[12] Elizabeth Salter that it formed part of the library of one Yorkshire monastery or another, and passed from them to the 16th-century collector John Nettleton.

[13] The recorded history of the manuscript begins some time before 1614 with a description of it in the private library catalogue of the Yorkshire book-collector Henry Savile of Banke as "An owld booke in English verse beginninge Perle plesant to Princes pay in 4º.

Before 1621 it was evidently acquired by Sir Robert Cotton, being then listed as "Gesta Arthuri regis et aliorum versu Anglico [Deeds of King Arthur and other matters in English verse]".

The scribe's irregularity in following the ruled lines and his heavy use of abbreviations and ligatures has led to the suggestion that he was more used to notarial than literary work.

[19] There are 48 decorated initials in the manuscript, all written in blue with red penwork, which range in size from fifteen to two lines.

[31] The first published quotations from Cotton Nero A X/2 appeared in a footnote in the third volume of Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry in 1781, comprising twelve lines from Pearl and four from Cleanness.