Author: Shepherd, Henry John
Biography:
SHEPHERD, Henry John (1783-1855: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 26 Oct. 1783 at Southampton Buildings, Holborn, London, and baptised on 3 Nov. at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, the only child of Sir Samuel Shepherd (1760-1840), lawyer and Lord Chief Baron of the Court of the Exchequer in Scotland, and Elizabeth White (1759-1833), who had married at St. Marylebone, London, on 1 Jan. 1783. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge (matric. 1806, BA 1807, MA 1823) and entered the Inner Temple in 1801 and Lincoln’s Inn in 1804. He was called to the Bar on 3 Feb. 1809 and appointed King’s Counsel in 1834. He was MP for Shaftesbury, Dorset (1818-20). He held a number of legal offices (Bencher 1838-55; Counsel to the Admiralty 1825-45; Recorder of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, 1833-52; Commissioner of Bankrupts 1845-50). He married Lady Mary Primrose (1777-1847), daughter of the Earl of Rosebery, at St. Clement Danes, Westminster, on 11 Apr. 1808, having previously eloped with her. They went on to have two daughters and a son. She had extensive intellectual interests and published a number of philosophical works which have attracted recent interest after being reprinted (Philosophical Writings, ed. Jennifer McRobert, 2 vols 2004). They lived for most of their lives in central London, initially at Bedford Square, Bloomsbury, and later at 3 Hyde Park Terrace, Bayswater. She died there on 7 Jan. 1847, aged 69, and was buried at Kensal Green, Kensington. The following year the husband of their eldest and sole-surviving daughter, Mary Elizabeth Brandreth, died and she and her four young children came to live at Hyde Park Terrace. Shepherd died on 21 May 1855 at Rosehill, Caversham, Oxfordshire, and was buried at Kensal Green, where there is a joint monumental tomb. He left his house and books to his daughter and made provision for her children. In addition to the work listed here, he published the romance poem Pedro of Castile (1838) and a prose work, A Summary of the Law relative to the Election of Members of Parliament (1825). (ancestry.co.uk 13 Nov. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 13 Nov. 2024; ODNB [Lady Mary Shepherd] 13 Nov. 2024; Mary Elizabeth Brandreth, Some Family and Friendly Recollections of 70 years [1888], 25-6 et passim; MH 13 Apr. 1808; GM Aug. 1847, 209, and July 1855, 108; GRO death cert.) AA