Glanvill, Ranulf De

Related Category: Law: Biographies

(rā´nəlf glăn´vĭl), d. 1190, English jurist. He served Henry II in many offices, finally as chief justiciar after 1180. He commissioned one of the great works of English law, the Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Angliae [treatise on the laws and customs of the realm of England], a compilation that bears his name. It is based on the common law then evolving in the royal courts.

See T. F. Plucknett, Early English Legal Literature (1958).