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- Justiciar of England. Basically ran the country at various points in the 1170s and 80s. Died on crusade.
In his household were raised and educated a number of the important administrative figures of the decades following his death. Two of them were brothers, his wife's nephews Theobald Walter, future chief butler of England and Ireland, and Hubert Walter, future justiciar, chancellor, and Archbishop of Canterbury. Another was Geoffrey fitz Peter, Hubert Walter's successor as justiciar. Also educated in his household for some years in the early 1180s was the young prince and future king, John.
Glanville's name has become attached to one of the important early books of English law, Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Angliae (Treatise on the laws and customs of the kingdom of England), a practical discourse on the forms of procedure in the king's court, known colloquially for centuries as Glanvill or the Tractatus of Glanvill. It was clearly written, not by him, but by followers of him and his nephew (and successor as justiciar) Hubert Walter. He and Hubert were certainly responsible, however, for the systematizing impulse that Glanville represents, and he may have personally overseen at least part of its composition.
"His foundation at Butley Priory preserved the tradition that his birthplace was Stratford, probably Stratford St Andrew near Saxmundham. The family name comes from a Norman village in Calvados, near Pont-l'Eveque, north-west of Lisieux, and Ranulf's ancestors arrived in Suffolk in or shortly after 1066." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]
From Wikipedia:
He is first heard of as Sheriff of Yorkshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire from 1163 to 1170 when, along with the majority of High Sheriffs, he was removed from office for corruption. However, in 1173 he had been appointed Sheriff of Lancashire and custodian of the honour of Richmond. In 1174, when he was Sheriff of Westmorland, he was one of the English leaders at the Battle of Alnwick, and it was to him that the king of Scotland, William the Lion, surrendered. In 1175 he was reappointed Sheriff of Yorkshire, in 1176 he became justice of the king's court and a justice itinerant in the northern circuit, and in 1180 Chief Justiciar of England. It was with his assistance that Henry II completed his famous judicial reforms, though many had been carried out before he came into office. He became the king's right-hand man, and during Henry's frequent absences was in effect regent of England. In 1176 he was also made custodian of Queen Eleanor, who was confined to her quarters in Winchester Castle.
After the death of Henry in 1189, Glanvill was removed from his office by Richard I on 17 September 1189 and imprisoned until he had paid a ransom, according to one authority, of £15,000. Shortly after obtaining his freedom he took the cross, and he died at the siege of Acre in 1190.
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