Name William Staunford | Died August 28, 1558 | |
Books An Exposicion of the Kinges Prerogative | ||
Sir William Stanford (August 1509 – 28 August 1558) was an English jurist and judge. His last name is also spelt Stamford or Staunford.
Stanford was born on either 20 August or 22 August 1509, the second son of William Stanford, a mercer. He was said to have been educated at Oxford, before proceeding to the bar, entering Gray's Inn in 1528 and being called to the bar in 1536. He was made a serjeant-at-law in 1552. In 1553 Mary I appointed him Queen's Serjeant. As serjeant, he unsuccessfully prosecuted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in 1554. He was appointed a justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1554, and was knighted the following year.
Stanford was Member of Parliament for Stafford in the 1542 and 1545 parliaments, and for Newcastle-under-Lyme in the 1547 parliament.
In 1557 Stanford published the first textbook of English criminal law; Les Plees del Coron. In 1567 his An Exposicion of the Kinges Prerogative (which he wrote in 1548) was published. William Fulbecke wrote in A Direction or Preparative to the Study of the Law (1600):
In Master Staunford there is force and weight, and no common kind of stile; in matter none hath gone beyonde him, in method, none hath overtaken him; in the order of his writing hee is smoothe, yet sharpe, pleasant, but yet grave; famous both for Judgement in matters of his profession, and for his great skill in forraigne learning, And surely his method may be a Law to the writers of the Law which succeed him.