Other verses prefixed to this book came from Tavistock, and were written by Sir John Glanvill, probably Browne’s relation, and an old schoolfellow.
After the Fitz, the Glanvill family was the most important in Tavistock. Settled at Holwell, in Whitchurch, for many generations, about 1550 they sent a younger son into the town as a merchant. His son, John, passed from an attorney’s office to the Bar, and in 1598, two years before his death, he was made a Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1615, the fine Jacobean monument against the south wall of the chancel was erected to his memory by his widow, probably in gratitude to her sons, who in that year had conveyed to her Sortridge, her own family estate, also in Whitchurch, probably forfeited by her second marriage; for in the interval she had married Sir Francis Godolphin, and become a second time a widow. She occupied a dower house in Barley Market Street, and her second name still lingers in the “Dolvin Road,” across the Tavy. The Judge, Prince tells us, lived in part of the Abbey, this being, most likely, the Abbey House, which Oliver says was occupied in 1635 by Serjeant Maynard. The Barton at Kilworthy was bought by Judge Glanvill, but it was his eldest son, Sir Francis, who built the mansion and laid out the terrace gardens, of which some charming portions are still in use. This Sir Francis Glanvill sat, as M.P. for Tavistock, in 1625 and 1628, with the great Commoner, John Pym. On January 21st, 1626, his son, Francis, was baptized at Mary Tavy, by reason of the plague raging so fiercely at Tavistock. So dreadful was the scourge, that six hundred people died in twelve months; and the little town had scarcely recovered its normal population in a hundred and fifty years. The younger Francis dying without issue, left Kilworthy to his nephew, Francis Kelly; and he left it to the Manatons, who held it till it was bought by the Russells about 1770. By his sisters, daughters, and grand-daughters, Judge Glanvill’s family became allied to the Brownes, Hamlyns, and Glubbs of Tavistock, the Grylls of Launceston, to Heles, Eastcourts, and Polwheles; to the Fowells, the Sawles of Penrice, and the Doidges of Hurlesditch; besides the Kellys and Manatons. One of his sisters was the second wife of Robert Knight, probably the first married Vicar of Tavistock; and his third son, George, was Vicar from 1662 to 1673.
Sir John Glanvill, the second son, was equally distinguished in law and politics. He was made Recorder of Plymouth in 1614, Serjeant in 1637, and Recorder of Bristol in 1640. As M.P. for Plymouth from 1614 to 1628, he was attached to the country party with Elliott and Pym, and he had charge of the Petition of Right before the Lords. Returned for Bristol in 1640, he was chosen Speaker of the Short Parliament, as a man of reasonable judgment and soothing speech; but having joined the King at Oxford in 1643, from 1645 to 1648 he was imprisoned in the Tower as a delinquent. He was re-appointed King’s Serjeant at the Restoration, and died soon after at Broad Hinton, his estate in Wiltshire. It was this worthy fellow-townsman who, in 1616, addressed William Browne in verses overflowing with kindly appreciation, and beginning:—
Ingenious Swaine! that highly dost adorne
Clear Tavy! on whose brinck we both were borne!
Another eminent fellow-townsman, John Maynard, might have been with Browne at the Grammar School, and certainly followed him to Exeter College and to the Inns of Court. Like Sir John Glanvill, Maynard was a man of mark, both in law and politics; but he was more of a time-server. He was clever enough to be leader of the Western Circuit during fifty of the most turbulent years of our annals. He was “Protector’s Serjeant” under Cromwell; “Ancient Serjeant” under Charles II. and James II.; and “Lord Commissioner” after the Revolution of 1688. He also sat in every Parliament from the first of Charles I. to the first of William and Mary. He was presented to the new King at Whitehall when he was nearly ninety; and William observed that he must have outlived all the lawyers of his time. “Yes, sire,” he promptly replied; “and if your Highness had not come over to help us, I should have outlived the law, too.” As Maynard took part both in the impeachment of Strafford and also of Sir Henry Vane, it is no wonder that Roscommon, Strafford’s nephew and godson, should write of him:—
The robe was summoned, Maynard at the head,
In legal murder none so deeply read;
or that the author of Hudibras should enquire, in his witty doggrel:—
Did not the learned Glynne and Maynard,