Henry Swinburne (lawyer)

[2] He graduated from Broadgates Hall, Oxford in 1580 with a Bachelor of Civil Law degree, and a few years later was called to the ecclesiastical bar at York.

[4] A briefe treatise of Testaments and last Wills was his most well-known work, and became a standard text for family law for almost 200 years, being reissued in seven different editions up to 1803.

Swinburne intended to rectify this by publishing a single book on family law which could act as a substitute to the hundreds of other texts on the matter.

[4] The book was "a model of clarity and scientific technique" set up in an orderly fashion that contrasted sharply with the disjointed nature of the nearest common law equivalents by James Dyer and Ambrose Gilbert.

[5] A treatise of Spousals, or Matrimonial Contracts was being written up to Swinburne's death in 1624, and was only published in 1686 when a draft was found in the library of Lincoln's Inn.