We may now conjecture that the author, or authors, of the treatise had for years been collecting writs, either for preservation as useful precedents, or possibly with the object of composing a commentary upon them. The collection finished, it would not be a matter of much time or difficulty for one who knew the law, writs in hand, to dictate his commentary to a secretary also learned in the law. If the collector was Glanville, and the secretary Hubert, we may suppose that the actual work of composition was begun in 1185, or 1186; not, apparently, a time of strenuous labor for either. Passages of particular importance or of especial interest to Glanville would be composed by him with care; the actual form of the remainder might safely be left to his competent secretary, subject only to revision by himself. In 1186 the Dean of York died, and the succession was given to Hubert; and Glanville soon set out on his embassy to the King of France. In spite of this, however, time still remained for the completion of the work in the rather less polished form of the later books. In February, 1187, Glanville and Hubert were sitting together in the Court at Westminster; and from that month to the beginning of 1189 (with the exception of Lent, 1188, when Glanville was preaching his crusade in Wales), both appear to have remained in England, without serious interruption from public business. The year 1188, in fact, seems to have been one of the least busy of Glanville’s official life; and, until his time was absorbed by the troubles of the closing year of the reign, there was nothing to prevent a continuance of the work. The last hurried chapters may well, therefore, have been completed in 1188. There is, then, nothing against the early and persistent tradition that Glanville wrote the treatise, and much in its favor; though most of the actual composition may have been the work of Hubert Walter. [The fullest discussion of the authorship of “Glanville” may be found in Pollock and Maitland’s “History of the English Law,” i, 163. Reeves’ discussion (“History of the English Law,” Finlayson’s Edition, i, 254) and Foss’s (“Judges of England,” i, 180) are also worth consulting upon this point. Liebermann (“Einleitung,” p. 73) supports the theory of Glanville’s authorship; and in the “Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie,” xix, 81, he gives interesting proof of the early popularity of the treatise. See also Professor Maitland’s article, “Glanville Revised,” in the Harvard Law Review, vi, 1. The life and character of Hubert may be found in the “Actus Pontificum Cantuariensium” of Gervase. Glanville’s and Hubert’s itineraries may be found in Eyton’s “Itinerary of Henry II.”] III. THE CHARACTER OF THE TREATISE.