Glanville

The author of the oldest treatise on English law, written in Latin, about A. D. 1181, under the title of Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae (A Treatise of the Laws and Customs of England). The older writers are generally agreed that this was Ranulphus de Glanvilla, chief justitiary of England, to Henry II, who was equally eminent as a soldier and a judge, and died at the seige of Acre, in 1190. Hoveden in Hen. II, Staunf. Praer. c.

1, fol. 5. Catlin, C. J. Plowden, 368a. Cowell. 8 Co. pref. Crabb's Hist. Eng. Law, 70.

The same opinion is adopted by Spelman and Sir Mathew Hale. Hist. Com. Law, c.

7.

Lord Coke gives the arms and genealogy of Glanville, and speaks with the greatest confidence on the subject.

8 Co. ub. sup.

Mr. Reeves, however, doubts the identity of these individuals, and thinks that the Glanville who wrote the treatise might have been a person of that name who was a justice itinerant.

1 Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, 223.

As to the work itself, there is little doubt of its being the most ancient treatise on English law. Spelman remarks that Glanville was the first who attempted to make that law a lex scripta, or written law. But it possesses a higher interest even than this, from the fact of its being the oldest work of the kind in Europe. Dr. Robertson observes that it was the first undertaking in any country in Europe, to collect into one body the customs which then regulated the administration of justice, and thus to render the law fixed.

1 Robertson's Charles V. Appendix, Note xxv.

Defontaines, the oldest law writer in France, composed his Conseil about half a century afterwards.