GLANVILLE, William (1615-80), of Broad Hinton, Wilts.

The eldest son of the prominent lawyer Sir John Glanville, William Glanville was educated at Lincoln’s Inn from April 1633.10LI Admiss. i. 220. In 1635 his elder sister, Mary, married the Cornish gentleman, Piers Edgcumbe*, and it was on Edgcumbe’s interest that Glanville was returned for the Cornish borough of Camelford in the autumn of 1640.11Cornw. RO, ME/841. Glanville apparently played little part in the early months of the Long Parliament. He was named to the committee to prepare instructions for the collectors of the subsidy on 30 April 1641, and signed the Protestation on 3 May.12Procs. LP iv. 148, 172; CJ ii. 133a. A year later, in April and May 1642 Glanville paid £600 into the Irish Adventure on his father’s behalf.13CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, p. 239. Although his father and brother-in-law were ardent royalists in the autumn of 1642, Glanville seems to have put off making a decision until after the outbreak of the hostilities. On 8 June 1643 the Commons accepted his plea for more time to consider whether or not to take the Oath and Covenant, and this may have been the ultimate sticking-point.14CJ iii. 120a. By January 1644 Glanville had joined the Oxford Parliament, signing its letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and he was disabled from sitting at Westminster, ‘for deserting the service of the House and being in the king’s quarters’ in the same month.15CJ iii. 374a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. He remained in Oxford for the next few months, and was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine by the university on 21 March 1644.16Wood, Fasti, ii. 68.

Glanville had joined Edgcumbe at his house at Mount Edgcumbe near the Devon border by July 1644, when he was listed as among the royalists in the garrison, although he does not appear to have held military rank.17CCAM 423. With the advance of the New Model army into Cornwall at the beginning of March 1646, Glanville joined Edgcumbe in last-minute negotiations with the parliamentarians for the surrender of the garrisons of Mount Edgcumbe and Millbrook. On 6 March 1646, Sir Thomas Fairfax* wrote to the Commons recommending Glanville and his comrades for favourable treatment, as ‘persons whose interests and endeavours have been very useful in reducing of the west’.18HMC Portland, i. 353; CJ iv. 495a. The case was referred to the Committee of the West, which reported on 15 February 1647, and on the same day the Commons ordered that Glanville should be allowed to compound for his estates on the payment of only two years’ value, and exempted him from paying the assessment.19CJ iv. 495a; v. 88b; CCC 1661; CCAM 423.

During the interregnum Glanville played no part in politics. In the summer of 1653 he signed a certificate making it clear that he had invested in the Irish Adventure only as his father’s proxy, and this allowed the sale of the family’s share to John Dawson of the Inner Temple.20CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, pp. 238-9. In the same year he married a daughter of the Warwickshire landowner, Sir Henry Gibbs.21Vivian, Vis. Devon, 413. Glanville’s relationship with Piers Edgcumbe remained very close. Edgcumbe was living with the Glanvilles at Broad Hinton in 1655-6, and in July 1658, William Glanville wrote to him at Cothele, saying that he had recently received ‘the kindest expressions that ever you wrote me, insomuch that they did reduce me to a tenderness almost unhandsome’.22Cornw. RO, ME/3021, 3026, 3027, 3041, 3052. He also told Edgcumbe of the death of his mother-in-law, which his wife ‘lays so close to heart that she is not fit for journeying this season’.23Cornw. RO, ME/3052. In May 1659 Edgcumbe appointed Glanville as one of his trustees for part of his estate.24Cornw. RO, ME/815.

Glanville inherited his father’s estates in 1661, but made only a modest return to public life after the Restoration. He was appointed to several local commissions, the last being that against recusants in Wiltshire in March 1675. His low profile in local affairs may have been caused in part by the death of his only son, Francis, a few weeks before his eleventh birthday. Glanville himself died in October 1680. His will made his wife sole executrix, and apparently left the bulk of the estate, including Broad Hinton, to his brother John. The will was disputed by his daughter, Winifred, who had married Carleton Stone of Brightwell Park, Oxfordshire, but the probate judges upheld its original terms.25Vivian, Vis. Devon, 413; PROB11/364/463.