But the English court had now become the centre of a distinctly secular literature.

The treatise of Ranulf de Glanvill, a justiciar of Henry the Second, is the earliest work on English law, as that of the royal treasurer, Richard Fitz-Neal, on the Exchequer is the earliest on English government.
[Sidenote: Gerald of Wales] Still more distinctly secular than these, though the work of a priest who claimed to be a bishop, are the writings of Gerald de Barri.

Gerald is the father of our popular literature as he is the originator of the political and ecclesiastical pamphlet.

Welsh blood (as his usual name of Giraldus Cambrensis implies) mixed with Norman in his veins, and something of the restless Celtic fire runs alike through his writings and his life.

A busy scholar at Paris, a reforming Archdeacon in Wales, the wittiest of Court chaplains, the most troublesome of bishops, Gerald became the gayest and most amusing of all the authors of his time.