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When we examine the attitude of those who scoffed at the stories vouched for by Glanvill and More it becomes evident that they assumed that practically all thinking men were with them. In other words, they believed that their group comprised the intellectual men of the time.
But whether he borrowed it from the ecclesiastical courts, or went directly to the fountain-head, certain it is that Glanvill makes use of the classification and technical language of the Corpus Juris throughout his tenth book.
The King of Scotland, William the Lion, surprised by the English under cover of a mist, fell into the hands of Henry's minister, Ranulf de Glanvill, and at the retreat of the Scots the English rebels hastened to lay down their arms. With the army of mercenaries which he had brought over sea Henry was able to return to Normandy, to raise the siege of Rouen, and to reduce his sons to submission.
In the hands of the Justiciar, Ranulf de Glanvill, England remained peaceful through the last stormy months of his reign, and his successor Richard found it undisturbed when he came for his crowning in the autumn of 1189. Though born at Oxford, Richard had been bred in Aquitaine; he was an utter stranger to his realm, and his visit was simply for the purpose of gathering money for a Crusade.
He saw the 'little modest girls in the bed, between seven and eight years old, as I guessed'. He saw their hands outside the bed-clothes, and heard the scratchings above their heads, and felt 'the room and windows shake very sensibly'. When he tapped or scratched a certain number of times, the noise answered, and stopped at the same number. Many more things of this kind Glanvill tells.
Glanvill and Bracton /3/ a tell us that a tenant holding of several lords was to do homage for each fee, but to reserve his allegiance for the lord of whom he held his chief estate; but that, if the different lords should make war upon each other, and the chief lord should command the tenant to obey him in person, the tenant ought to obey, saving the service due to the other lord for the fee held of him.
The opinions of Glanvill and Matthew Hale had been carried to America and now were brought back to fortify belief in England. Richard Baxter was most clearly influenced by the accounts of what had happened in the New World. The Mathers were his friends and fellow Puritans, and their testimony was not to be doubted for a minute. But Baxter needed no convincing.
But Glanvill also seems to admit the use of witness to establish debts. /1/ As the transaction witnesses were formerly available for this purpose, I see no reason to doubt that they still were, and that he is speaking of them here also. /2/ Moreover, for a long time after Henry II., whenever an action was brought for a debt of which there was no written evidence, the plaintiff, when asked what he had to show for it, always answered "good suit," and tendered his witnesses, who were sometimes examined by the court. /3/ I think it is not straining the evidence to infer that the "good suit" of the later reports was the descendant of the Saxon transaction witnesses, as it has been shown that Glanvill's secta was. /4/
Two sheriffs, Robert of Stuteville of Yorkshire and Ranulf Glanvill of Lancashire, probably had most to do with collecting the forces and leading them. At the news of their arrival, William fell back toward the north, dividing up his army and sending detachments off in various directions to plunder the country.
In connection with those affairs was mentioned the name of that brave researcher, Mr. Glanvill. The history of the witch literature of this period is little more than an account of Joseph Glanvill, of his opinions, of his controversies, of his disciples and his opponents. It is not too much to say that in Glanvill the superstition found its ablest advocate.
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