Reginald de Cornhill

Reginald de Cornhill was an English administrator under King John.

His father, Gervase, had also been High Sheriff of Kent in 1170-74 and his brother Henry de Cornhill sheriff of London. He became the King's Justiciar, High Sheriff of Kent from 1189 to 1193 and 1196 to 1215 and High Sheriff of Surrey from 1213 to 1215. In 1215 he was sent to Lancaster to also take over as High Sheriff of Lancaster following the revolt of Gilbert Fitzreinfrid.

He was constable of Rochester Castle in 1215 on behalf of its then holder Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury. He opened its gates to William d'Aubigny and his troops, whom the barons rebelling against King John had sent to the castle to hold it against the King. He held out against the King's two-month siege.

Through his wife Maud he had a claim to the stewardship of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, which he and his wife quitclaimed for 80 marks and 50 acre in land by fine in 1197. In 1203 the prior and convent of Prittlewell Priory, in return for a quitclaim of a moiety of the advowson of the church of North Shoebury, granted to Reginald and his heirs the perpetual right to present one clerk to be a monk in their house.(From: 'Houses of Cluniac monks: Priory of Prittlewell', A History of the County of Essex: Volume 2 (1907), pp. 138–41. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=39839. Date accessed: 9 February 2007.)