The law John's courts were applying in 1200: the writs of right, novel disseisin and mort d'ancestor, the grand assize, dower, wardship and relief, debt, villeinage, and the pleas of the crown. It is the key to the Curia Regis rolls and the fine rolls of 1199 to 1200, and to what a lord's claim to a castle or an heir was worth before the justices. A working textbook, not a code, and only a decade old at the start of 1200.
About this source
- Title
- Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie
- Author
- Anonymous, traditionally ascribed to Ranulf de Glanvill
- Author's dates
- Ranulf de Glanvill, justiciar 1180 to 1189, died 1190
- Written
- about 1187 to 1189
- Language
- Latin
- Covers
- the procedure of the king's court about 1188
- Kind
- Law
Authorship is disputed; Glanvill's name is traditional and the author may have been a clerk in his circle, perhaps Hubert Walter. Hall's edition is standard and under copyright.
Where to read it
Editions
- G. D. G. Hall (ed. and trans.), The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England commonly called Glanvill (1965; reissued 1993), not free (not freely online)
Translations
- J. Beames, A Translation of Glanville (1812), English; Washington reprint of 1900 with an introduction by J. H. Beale
- Beames's translation at Project Gutenberg