De perfectione statuum[1432]. Inc. ‘Quod status prelatorum sc. pastorum ecclesie.’
MSS. Oxford:—Merton Coll. 65, f. 119 (A. D. 1456).
Cambridge:—Public Library Dd. III. 47 (sec. xv); Corpus Christi Coll. 107, fol. 77-93a (sec. xv).
Florence:—Laurentiana, ex Bibl. S. Crucis, Plut. xxxvi, Dext. Cod. xii, p. 101 (sec. xiv exeuntis).
Opusculum Doctoris Subtilis super aliquos canones Arzachel. (Doubtful.)
MS. Cambridge:—Public Library 1017, f. 14-15 (sec. xv). Cf. Tanner, Bibl. p. 689, sub ‘Stantonus.’
Tractatus Johannis Dons Scoti de lapide philosophorum. (Apocryphal.)
MS. Paris:—Bibl. Nat. 14008, f. 156.
Robert Cowton, or de Couton (co. York), according to W. Woodford, entered the Order when young[1433]. He was at Oxford in 1300, when the Provincial asked the Bishop of Lincoln to license him, among others, to hear confessions, but Robert was among the rejected[1434]. At this time he was not a doctor. According to Bale and Pits he studied philosophy at Oxford and theology at Paris: there can be little doubt that he obtained the degree of D.D. in the latter University. His title of ‘the pleasant doctor[1435]’ is not vouched for by any early authority.
If we may draw any inference from the number of MSS. preserved, few works by any Franciscan were more in demand in England[1436] in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than the Commentaries of Robert Cowton on the Sentences. The following MSS. contain them, or parts of them.