Glanvill is the supposed author of this treatise on the laws and customs of England, a work that was a twelfth-century precursor to the legal compendium of Bracton, composed in the thirteenth century. Glanvill introduces the concept of law and justice and explains the different Latin legal terms, many drawn from contemporary French, in use at the time and the different legal procedures that had developed since the Conquest.

The chapter concentrates on the intellectual and social identity of the author of the late twelfth-century English law book known as Glanvill, by examining his context, formation and outlook. The method is twofold: first, close engagement with the text, not just what it says, but also how it says it, not just content, but also form and language; secondly, comparison, especially with Richard fitzNigel’s Dialogue of the Exchequer, but also with works from the learned law tradition, in particular the procedural manuals known as Ordines. The chapter explores the processes of composition of the treatise; the significance of its form and style as a means of establishing authority; the ways in which the author identifies with particular courts and particular sources of law; the standing given by specialist knowledge and legal authority; and finally the possible audiences, imagined and real.

This paper discusses Regiam Maiestatem, known by the mid-fifteenth century to constitute much of Scotland’s ‘ancient law’.Although it was used and cited as an authority of Scotland’s common law into the modern period, Regiam has an unusually controversial past. It is currently understood to have been compiled during the reign of Robert I (1306–29), during Scotland’s ‘wars of independence’ with England, although much of its material is based on the late twelfth-century English legal tractate known as Glanvill. As a result of the relationship between it and Glanvill, Regiam has been both dismissed as constituting ’no part’ of Scots law and as providing evidence for the shared legal framework of Scotland and England. Yet it remains a remarkably understudied work in itself, partly because of its complicated manuscript tradition and its confused and often conflicting readings. This lecture offers a new interpretation of Regiam’s intended purpose by situating it in the context of later thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century political thought and, in so doing, offers a different interpretation of the intellectual underpinnings and practice of Robert I’s kingship.