William Hawkins (1682–1750) was a barrister and serjeant-at-law, best known for his work on the English criminal law, Treatise of Pleas of the Crown.
Among his clients was Thomas Bambridge, the notoriously cruel warden of Fleet Prison.
In addition to his Treatise of Pleas of the Crown, he also published an abridgment of the first part of Edward Coke's Institutes of the Lawes of England in 1711.
This work ran through many editions, and was praised by Blackstone in the Commentaries on the Laws of England.
[4] He died in Hornchurch, Essex on 19 February 1750, leaving lands in London and Islip, Oxfordshire.