“A Treatise on the Law and Customs of the Kingdom of England” is the earliest systematic treatise on law written in modern times. A few collections of law and decretals, like the _Decretum_ of Gratian and the “Assises of Jerusalem,” had, to be sure, been published earlier; but they were not, like this book, regular expositions of an existing system of law. Bracton’s work was modelled on Glanville, and, through Bracton, Glanville thus fixed the type of the modern commentary on law. An imitation, in many parts an exact copy, of this book was later published in Scotland under the title “Regiam Majestatem,” and the claim was vigorously made for a time that it was the original, Glanville the imitation. This notion, improbable on its face, was absolutely disproved by arguments set forth in Beames’ Introduction. The first edition of the treatise was printed by R. Tottel in small 12mo, about the year 1554. Coke says that this was done by suggestion of Sir William Stanford, the learned judge and author. The second edition was printed by Thomas Wright in 1604. The text was corrected by the collation of “various manuscripts.” This edition was exactly reprinted, omitting the preface, in 1673. The treatise was again printed in the first volume of Houard’s “_Traités sur les Coutumes Anglo-Normandes_” in quarto, Rouen, 1776. The last Latin edition was published by John Rayner, 8vo, 1780, collated with the Bodleian, the Cottonian, the Harleian and Doctor Milles’s manuscripts by J.E. Wilmot. The Latin text is also printed as an appendix to Phillips’s “Englische Reichs und Rechtsgeschichte,” ii, 335: Berlin, 1828. A collation of Glanville with the “Regiam Majestatem” may be found in the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, i, 133. An English translation by John Beames, with notes, was published in octavo, London, 1812, and is reprinted in the present edition. This treatise is more than a mere law book. It is a monument to the genius of one of the greatest legal reformers of all time. Henry II. came to the throne, after a long period of anarchy, to find countless systems of law administered by a confused and confusing mass of popular courts and feudal courts. He at once set himself to bring order and unity out of anarchy and chaos. He made the King’s Court the common court of the land; he determined its jurisdiction as against the church, the lords and the sheriffs; and he made it the guardian of a King’s peace, which should protect high and low throughout the whole land. The establishment of peace was in fact the chief object of his stormy career. Glanville’s treatise shows us the method he took to secure his object.