Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/650

 636 V. BENCH AND BAR which each of the thirteen Serjeants received the degrees of the coif is the date at which he began service as a judge. It is probable that the " status et gradus servientis ad legem,'* in the writ calling a serjeant, was merely a nomination of the man to be a king's justice. The matter is too obscure to admit of positive statement. But there must have been some reason for the rule that obtained for so many centuries, that no man could become a judge until he had been called to the degree of serjeant. The first name among these lawyers is Glanville's. Whether he wrote our first law book, which is called Glan- ville, is sharply debated. But he was at any rate a great judge with considerable legal learning. He probably re- ceived his legal training in the exchequer. But e was no less a warrior. As sheriff of Yorkshire he gathered an army and defeated the Scottish King and took him prisoner. King Henry entrusted to Glanville the custody of his wife, Elinor, whom he guarded for sixteen years. When in 1179 most of the King's justices were removed, Glanville was con- tinued in office and took his place in the court at West- minster. In the next year he became Chief Justiciar. One slanderous story of his judicial conduct has come down to us, but it is no more than idle gossip. Under Richard the Lion Hearted, Glanville took the vow of a crusader and preceded King Richard to the Holy Land, where he died under the walls of Acre. It may be that Glanville did not write the book that passes under his name. Perhaps Hubert Walter, his nephew, a learned civil lawyer, who became Archbishop of Canter- bury, put it together. It shows traces of the Roman influ- ence, and Glanville was no partisan of Rome. There is on record a writ of prohibition issued by Glanville against the Abbot of Battle. On the hearing Glanville said to the priests : " You monks turn your eyes to Rome alone, and Rome will one day destroy you." The prophecy came true after three hundred years. Far more noted in this reign is the name of Becket. He was a trained lawyer educated in the canon and the civil law at Paris. He may very well have devised some of