Sheppard, William, d. 1675?

Sheppard's Epitome : (English Law, 1656)

An Epitome of all the Common & Statute Laws of this Nation, 1656

William Sheppard was born in Gloucestershire and enjoyed a large law practice in the country before he was invited by Cromwell to come to London. He was made one of the clerks of the upper bench, and rose to some prominence: he soon was made a serjeant-at-law, and later was nominated with three others to prepare the charters granted to town corporations. He wrote several published works during this time, including the much- reprinted Precedent of Precedents, as well as legal guides for constables, justices of the peace, parsons, and court keepers. He also wrote several more political pieces, with titles like: The peoples priviledge and duty guarded against the pulpit and preachers incroachment and their sober justification and defence of their free and open exposition of Scriptures (1652). During the Restoration Sheppard was removed from his offices and fell into obscurity, but continued writing well into the 1670s.

Sheppard's work, a thick folio, was said to be the earliest of the "encyclopedic" abridgments: those containing the whole law, reduced to scientific treatises in alphabetical order by subject. Holdsworth, who thought Sheppard was a rather second-rate writer, considered it "a poor piece of work, something between a law dictionary and a digest." As Sheppard claimed in his preface to have worked on this volume for more than 36 years, he must have been disappointed with the tepid response the work received; while he produced a revised, enlarged edition in 1675, both volumes were soon forgotten. Marvin believed the work actually possessed considerable merit, and that the author was an industrious and learned lawyer, but his adherence to Cromwell was the cause of the work's consignment to near-oblivion.

On the verso of the title page, Tarlton's copy bears the bookplate of the Honorable Robert Price, dated 1703. Price (1655-1733) was a member of Lincoln's Inn who had an illustrious, storied career as a judge that spanned more than thirty years. Among other posts, Price was a member of the House of Commons for the borough of Weobley, a baron of the exchequer, and finally served as a justice of the common pleas. He was a consistent Tory and was considered an honest and painstaking judge.

Holdsworth, W. S. Sources and Literature of English Law. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928). See also John G. Marvin, Legal Bibliography, or a Thesaurus of American, English, Irish, and Scotch Law Books (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1847).

Bibliography