This study presents a full account of Sheppard's employment under Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate as well as an examination of his family background and education, his religious commitment to John Owen's party of Independents and his legal philosophy. An appraisal of all Sheppard's legal works, including those written during the Civil War and the Restoration period, illustrates the overlapping concerns with law reform, religion and politics in his generation. Sheppard had impressively consistent goals for the reform of English law and his prescient proposals anticipate the reforms ultimately adopted in the nineteenth century, culminating in the Judicature Acts of 1875-8. Dr Matthews examines the relative importance of Sheppard's books to his generation and to legal literature in general. The study provides a full bibliography of Sheppard's legal and religious works and an appendix of the sources Sheppard used in the composition of his books on the law.

Difference between Gaming and Gambling-Universality and Antiquity of Gambling-Isis and Osiris-Games and Dice of the Egyptians-China and India-The Jews-Among the Greeks and Romans-Among Mahometans-Early Dicing-Dicing in England in the 13th and 14th Centuries-In the 17th Century-Celebrated Gamblers-Bourchier-Swiss Anecdote-Dicing in the 18th Century. Gaming is derived from the Saxon word Gamen, meaning joy, pleasure, sports, or gaming-and is so interpreted by Bailey, in his Dictionary of 1736; whilst Johnson gives Gamble-to play extravagantly for money, and this distinction is to be borne in mind in the perusal of this book; although the older term was in use until the invention of the later-as we see in Cotton's Compleat Gamester (1674), in which he gives the following excellent definition of the word: -"Gaming is an enchanting witchery, gotten between Idleness and Avarice: an itching disease, that makes some scratch the head, whilst others, as if they were bitten by a Tarantula, are laughing themselves to death; or, lastly, it is a paralytical distemper, which, seizing the arm, the man cannot chuse but shake his elbow.