# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Glanville, John (1586-1661)

​GLANVILLE, Sir JOHN, the younger (1586–1661), serjeant, second son of Sir John Glanville [q. v.], judge of the common pleas, and Alice Skerret his wife, was born at Kilworthy, near Tavistock, in 1586. He was brought up to be an attorney, but entered at Lincoln's Inn, was called to the bar about 1610, and became reader there in Hilary term 1630. In 1614 he was elected member for Plymouth, and was successively re-elected in 1620, 1623, 1625, 1626, and 1628, and played a conspicuous part as one of the opponents of the crown in parliament. In 1624 he prepared a collection of cases, nine in number, relating to the elections of burgesses to parliament, decided by election committees of the House of Commons, which were published in 1775 by John Topham of Lincoln's Inn, and his opinion carried great weight in the discussion upon Sir Thomas Wentworth's election for Yorkshire, which was ended by the decision on 5 July 1625 that the election was void. He prepared the protest against the dissolution of parliament, which the house hastily adopted on 12 Aug. 1625, while black rod was waiting at the door, and had applied himself so pertinaciously to criticising ‘the expense of the kingdom,’ that by way of punishment, and to keep him out of parliament, he was sent with the fleet to Cadiz in September 1625 as secretary to the council of war. He took part in the impeachment of Buckingham in 1626, having the management of articles 6, 7, and 8 in the conference between the two houses on 17 and 18 April 1628; carried, by 191 votes to 150, the addition of a 13th article; and was one of those charged with laying the Petition of Right before the House of Lords, and his speech delivered in a general committee of both houses on 22 May 1628, giving the reasons why the house should not agree to the form of the petition of right proposed by the House of Lords, was printed and published in the same year. He became eminent in his profession; appeared before the Star-chamber for Lord Poulett against the Rev. Richard Gore on 13 Nov. 1635; was counsel for Lord Dacre in a suit about the manor of Dacre in Cumberland in 1637, and in the same year advised the Bishop of Bath and Wells in his dispute with Sir Francis Popham about the right of presentation to the living of Buckland St. Mary in Somerset. In the year following he was appointed by the lord keeper referee in a chancery suit about the rights of copartners in gavelkind. He was also proctor for the dean and chapter of Windsor. He was appointed recorder of Plymouth as early as 1614, and became a serjeant on 20 May 1637. Shortly afterwards he became recorder of Bristol, and seems to have been in good relations with the court, for on 21 Aug. 1639 he tried one Davis for nonconformity, having been already in conference with Laud, Coke, and the attorney-general about the conduct of the case, and, as the Bishop of Bristol wrote to Laud, ‘did his part copiously, gravely, and with semblance of great severity.’ He was elected for Bristol, and having been pointed out by rumour as likely to be speaker in the Short parliament, was elected on 15 April 1640. He was then reported to have made his submission to the king. His address to the king on his appointment is entered in the ‘Lords' Journals,’ iv. 50–4. He spoke so strongly against ship-money (see Harl. MS. 4931, fol. 49), that the court party believed he would put to the house any protestations that might be made against it, and accordingly prevented him from coming down to the house on the day the Short parliament was dissolved. He adhered, however, to the king subsequently, was made a king's serjeant on 5 July 1640, with leave to continue to hold the recordership of Bristol, was knighted in 1641, and went with the king to Oxford in 1643, where he received the degree of D.C.L. He also acted as a judge with others in 1643 at Salisbury to try the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, and Salisbury for assisting the parliament, whereupon the commons ordered a committee to draw up an impeachment of treason against Glanville and his colleagues. Next year, when he had fallen into the hands of the parliament, he was ordered to be impeached for condemning Captain Turpine to death, and on 25 Sept. 1644 was disabled to be a member of the ​house for his delinquency. He was imprisoned in the Tower in 1645; but partly by Whitelocke's intercession, and by giving up one-fifth of his rents yearly as composition for the fine of 2,320l. imposed upon him, he was released on 27 July 1648, and retired to Hampshire (see Evelyn, Diary, ed. 1850, i. 293). He was, however, elected member of parliament by the university of Oxford during the Commonwealth. In March 1654 he was anxious to resume his practice at the bar, and accordingly petitioned the council, by whom his petition was referred to a committee. At the Restoration he was again appointed a king's serjeant. He died on 2 Oct. 1661, and was buried at Broad Hinton Church, Wiltshire. About 1615 he married Winifred, daughter of William Bouchier of Barnsley, Gloucestershire, by whom he had seven children, four sons: William, who succeeded to his estates; John, a barrister; Francis, who fell at Bridgewater during the civil war on the king's side; and Julius. He had extensive estates, having bought Laverstoke in Hampshire in 1637, and Highway in 1640, which cost 4,700l., and was patron of the livings of Broad Hinton, Wiltshire, and Lamerton in Devonshire. Fuller calls him one of 'the biggest stars' of the law.
[W. U. Glanville-Richards's Records of the House of Glanville; Grosart's Voyage to Cadiz (Camden Soc.), 1883; Woolrych's Eminent Serjeants; Bruce and Hamilton's Domestic State Papers; "Whitelocke's Memorials; Lloyd's Loyal Sufferers; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (ed. Bliss), ii. 720; Waylen's Hist. of Marlborough; Prince's Worthies of Devon; Fuller's Worthies, p. 257; Burnet's Life of Hale; Burton's Parliamentary Diary, iii. 236; S. R. Gardiner's Hist. of England, v. vi. vii. ix.; Forster's Sir John Eliot; Wood's Journals, iii. 814; Fuller's Ephemeris; Rushworth, i. 572.]
J. A. H.