The historian Katharine Keats-Rohan suggests that he was possibly the nephew of Peter, who was the Bishop of Chester and a Norman.
[4] The Domesday Book of 1086 records him owning at least seven churches, but only two of them have any indication that he performed any ecclesiastical services personally.
[14] The entire issue of whether Regenbald was a "true" chancellor or not is bound up in the debate amongst medievalists about whether there was a recognisable chancery in England prior to the Norman Conquest.
One school of thought, led by Pierre Chaplais, argues that no such office existed prior to the Conquest.
[15] In Regenbald's case, a number of the documents that give him the title "chancellor" either are forgeries or have been altered in the copying process.
[16] Besides his scribal duties, he also served as a royal judge, as he is recorded as passing judgement in a case late in Edward's or early in William's reign, along with Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, and Æthelwig, Abbot of Evesham.
Possibly, he was buried at Cirencester, where a stone tomb in the crypt of the Saxon-era church still exists and may be his.
[18] After his death, a group of his lands became the basis for the foundation of Cirencester Abbey by King Henry I of England in 1133.