(b c1515; d Dec 1558). English composer. There is no evidence to support assertions that he was a choirboy at St Paul’s Cathedral. At Michaelmas 1543 he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, as Informator choristarum. His character has regularly been blackened as a result of misreading of, and scribal inaccuracy in, the college records, which frequently attribute to him the misconduct of Richard Shepper, Fellow and Preston scholar of Magdalen from 1547 to 1557: the composer was at Magdalen only until 1548. In 1552 his name is in the list of the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, but because of the gap in Chapel Royal records from 1547, it is not known when Sheppard joined the Gentlemen. He was at the chapel throughout the 1550s. His will was made on 1 December 1558, and although he was allocated liveries for the funeral of Queen Mary on 13 December and the coronation of Elizabeth I on ...