GLAN'VILL. The putative author of the first classical text-book of the English common law. This work, A Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England(Tractatas de Lcgibus et Can suctudinibus Angliw), appears from internal evi dence to have been composed toward the close of the twelfth century, and in the last years of the reign of Henry II. The Glanvill whose name it bears is doubtless the celebrated Ranulph de Glanvill, Chief Justieiar and Prime Minis ter of Henry, one of the conspicuous figures of that stormy period of English history. He came of a Suffolk family of position, was Sheriff of Yorkshire from 1163 to 1170, and in 1174, when Sheriff of Lancashire. led the forces of the King against the invading Scots, and won a great victory. Thereafter his place was at the right hand of the King as trusted adviser, ambassador, prime minister, and justiciar. He died at Acre in 1200, to which place he had gone with Rich ard I. on his crusade to the Holy Land.
But there is no trustworthy evidence that Ran ulph de Glanvill wrote the law hook attributed to him. It is more likely to have been the work of some learned clerk at his court, perhaps of his secretary and kinsman, Hubert Walter, and that the title of the work is a dedication rather than an attribution. But there can be no doubt that it represents the law of Glanvill's time, and is a correct picture of the legal system which he was engaged in shaping. Though the writer must
have had some knowledge of the canon law, his work is English both in matter and arrangement. That is to say, it is not 'institutional' and scien tific in form, but empirical and practical. It sets forth the procedure of the King's Court, the Curia Regis, the various pleas which it will en tertain, the several classes of wrongs which it will remedy, and the plea appropriate to each, and so considers the substantive law, both civil and criminal, after the usual common-law meth od, from the standpoint of procedure. It im mediately took high rank as a legal authority, and retained its unquestioned supremacy until superseded, sixty or seventy years later, by Brac ton's great work. In the meantime many edi tions, as we should call them, by various anno tators, appeared, and many of these manuscripts are still in existence. A Scotch version, known as the Regtam Majestatem, long passed as an original treatise.
Glanvill was first printed in the year 1554 at the instance of Sir W. Stanford, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. It was early translated into French and an English version by Beames appeared in 1812. A new edition of Beames's translation has recently appeared under the care ful editorship of Prof. Joseph H. Beale, Jr. (Washington, 1000).