Beginning his royal service as a justice in London in 1147, he continued to serve both King Stephen of England and Henry II until his death around 1183.
According to medievalist Katharine Keats-Rohan, Gervase was the son of Roger, who was the nephew of Hubert, the queen's chamberlain.
[1] Gervase was royal justice in London in 1147,[1] and continued to claim that title through the 1170s on his personal seal.
Around 1143 he loaned money to Stephen's wife Matilda of Boulogne, and received in pledge land at Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire.
[8] Gervase was part of the party that met Becket at Sandwich on 1 December 1170 when the archbishop returned to England.
[2] In 1177 Gervase, along with Richard de Luci, the justiciar and Roger fitzReinfrid, assessed land taxes and heard judicial cases in Middlesex and Hampshire.
[2] The medieval writer William of Canterbury said that Gervase was "thinking of his usurious two-thirds and hundredths rather than of what was good and right".