Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/420

 . p. 385) but Richard was raising money for the crusade upon every excuse, and he seems to have seen the value of the old statesman. Glanville was present at the coronation (3 Sept. 1189), and was employed to suppress the riots which arose out of the ensuing Jew-bait (. i. 297). According to one story, he resigned the justiciarship, misdoubting Richard's policy (ib. i. 302); an old man, worn out by work, he wished to fulfil the crusader's vow which he had taken some years before (. ii. 87). According to another, Richard deposed him and forced him to go on the crusade (. p. 386). Very possibly the king hoped to make him useful, but did not dare to leave him behind in England. Anyway, he, with Archbishop Baldwin and Hubert Walter, accompanied Richard to Marseilles (July 1190); and thence he sailed for the siege of Acre (. ii. 115). At Acre he died. His death seems to have happened before 21 Oct. 1190 (''Ep. Cant''. p. 329), and to have been caused, not by the sword of the infidel, but by the eastern climate (. p. 29).

The picture that we get of him is that of an active, versatile man, ready at short notice to lead an army, negotiate a peace, hold a council, decide a cause; above all things faithful to his master. We read of his sagacity and of his eloquence; of the pride that he took in the expeditious justice of the royal court (, Nug. Cur. p. 241). There is against him one very bad story of how he sought to pervert the law in order that he might compass the death of a certain Gilbert Plumpton, against whom he had a private grudge; and this story comes from a good source (. i. 314). He must have had a hand in carrying through the great legal changes which mark the reign of Henry II. In after days tradition made him the inventor of the assize of novel disseisin and the action of replevin (Mirror of Justices, c. 2, §§ 25, 26), but that he was a trained lawyer we are not told by any writer of his time. We are told, however, that when in power he was much influenced by his secretary and nephew, Hubert Walter. This is the Hubert Walter who became dean of York, bishop of Salisbury, archbishop of Canterbury, chief justiciar and chancellor, and who bore a high reputation for legal learning ('omnia regni novit jura,' . ii. 406). Perhaps later ages have ascribed to Glanville juristic attainments which in truth were those of his more clerkly kinsman and successor.

But he has long been best known as the reputed author of a 'Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England,' the oldest of our legal classics. His right to this fame depends mainly on the words of the contemporary chronicler Roger of Hoveden, who under the year 1180 says that the king appointed as justiciar Ranulf Glanville, 'cujus sapientia conditæ sunt leges subscriptæ.' On this statement there follow: (1) a set of laws professedly made by the Conqueror; (2) the collection of laws generally known as 'Leges Edwardi Confessoris;' (3) the treatise in question; (4) certain ordinances of Henry II. Probably Hoveden only means that Glanville, as justiciar, sanctioned these various documents, or that they contained the rules which he administered; it can hardly be intended that he composed what announce themselves as laws of the Confessor and the Conqueror, and it seems very plain that the hand that wrote the treatise was not the hand that compiled the 'Leges Edwardi.' Thus as to the authorship of the treatise Hoveden's evidence falls short, and it is not certain that we have any other first-hand evidence. An examination of all the many manuscripts which give the treatise might perhaps settle this point; but it is believed that as a general rule they simply state that the book was written during Glanville's justiciarship ('justiciæ gubernacula tenente &hellip; Ranulpho de Glanvilla'). There is good internal evidence that it was written during the last years of Henry's reign, and apparently it was not finished until after October 1187 (lib. viii. cap. ii. iii.) Its object is to describe the procedure of the king's court; more than once the author says that he is ignorant of what goes on in other courts. He does not speak in a tone of authority; in England there is a confused multitude of laws which it were hopeless to define; but he will try to set down some matters of daily importance. He writes as a lawyer keenly interested in legal problems, and not ashamed to confess that he does not know the answer to all the questions that he raises. The book looks more like the work of one of the clerks of the royal court than like that of the chief justiciar, who, during the last years of Henry's reign, can have had little time for writing a legal treatise. The conjecture seems permissible that it was written by Hubert Walter. When in the middle of the thirteenth century [q. v.] was going over the same ground with this treatise before him, and wanted examples of proper names in order to show how fatal it was for a pleader to make mistakes in them, the two names which occurred to him were his own and that of Hubert Walter (f. 188b). If he had coupled Glanville's name with his own, we should have thought it very natural that he should thus associate himself with the writer in whose steps he was following. However, ever since the book was printed