3.11. Conformance of James Cottrell with the Template for the Gawain-Poet

Putting aside the conformance of James Cottrell with the absolutely necessary first (Section 3.1) and second (Section 3.2) issues, the remaining eight points suggest very strongly the identification of James Cottrell with the Gawain-Poet.  We have positive historical evidence that he fulfils seven of these eight requirements, and a strong inference that he must also fulfil the last requirement (third, Section 3.3.)  Following the procedures outlined in Appendix A the overall probability that any one candidate drawn at random from the appropriate population would satisfy the last seven requirements for which direct evidence is available is estimated as 0.000000025, or only 0.01816875 in a population of 726,750 (about 55 to 1 against it being a chance happening.)  If we include education, we arrive at 2,752 to 1 against this being a multitude of coincidences.  We conclude that James Cottrell conforms extremely well to the template with very little chance of this conformance being a multitude of coincidences.