Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Glanville, John (1542-1600)
GLANVILLE, Sir JOHN, the elder (1542–1600), judge, born in 1542, second son of John Glanville of Tavistock, was bred an attorney. He is the first attorney who is recorded to have reached the bench. He entered at Lincoln's Inn on 11 May 1567, and was called to the bar on 24 June 1574. He was reader there in Lent 1589, and again in the autumn, having been made a serjeant in the meantime. He was member of parliament for Launceston in 1585, for Tavistock in 1586, and for St. Germans in 1592. He was in 1594 interested in St. Margaret's tin works in Cornwall (Green, Cal. State Papers, Dom. 25 Feb. 1594). On 30 June 1598 he was made a judge of the common pleas, and died on 27 July 1600. He was buried in Tavistock Church, where there is an elaborate tomb, with a recumbent statue of him in his robes, engraved in Polwhele's ‘Devon.’ He married Alice, daughter of John Skerret of Tavistock, who survived him, and had by her seven children, of whom the second son was John [q. v.], speaker of the House of Commons in 1640. He died rich, and built the mansion of Kilworthy, near Tavistock.
[Wood's Fasti, ed. 1820–2, p. 64; Polwhele's Hist. of Devonshire, and Hist. of Cornwall, v. 137, 138; Black Book, v. 64, 183; Prince's Worthies of Devon; Dugdale's Origines, p. 251; W. U. S. Glanville-Richards's Records of the House of Glanville; Foss's Lives of the Judges.]