Papers of William Sherard

William Sherard's papers include much material relating to his revision of Bauhin's Pinax, and to Paul Hermann. There are also many botanical drawings:

• material relating to the Sherardian Pinax, n.d., including an interleaved copy of Caspar Bauhin Pinax, 2nd ed. (1671) annotated by Sherard
• correspondence, including two letters from H. Boernaave, 1727.
• lists of plants observed at Badmington, Ceylonese seeds, plants at Surinam and Ambonia, and French fungi, late 17th-early 18th century
• possibly a draft by Sherard of Paul Hermann's Musaeum Zeylandicum, 1717
• drawings of plants intended to illustrate the Catalogus plantarum at the end of Paul Hermann's Paradisus Batavus (1698)
• miscellaneous papers of Paul Hermann, including a journal, in Dutch, of a Botanical expedition from the Cape of Good Hope, Aug. 1685-Jan. 1686; additions by Hermann and Sherard to Prodromus Paradisi Batavi; various botanical and pharmaceutical notes and lists; and an autograph list of Hermann's pupils, 17th century
• Botanical drawings: 
  • drawings of animals and plants entitled 'Jacobi Bontii medici arcis ac civitatis Bataviae Novae in Indis ordinarii Exoticorum Indicorum Centuria prima, 1630'
  • drawings of palms by Engelbert Kempfner, 1689
  • 139 coloured drawings of African plants entitled 'Herbarium Capense', n.d.
  • copies of drawings by Charles Plumier, 1689-97
  • coloured drawings of fungi by Tommaso Maria Chelini, 1699 and 1716
  • coloured drawings of fungi, 1724, and watercolours of orchids with descriptions, 1699, by Bruno Tozzi
• papers relating to the herbarium of Charles de Bois, late 17th-early 18th century
• miscellaneous botanical papers of Italian origin, early 18th century
• works by Josephus Baldius including 'Tractatus de Fungis', with title page and notes by Bruno Tozzi, 17th century
• printed pamphlets with manuscript botanical notes, 1658-66.

William Sherard (1659-1728) studied botany at Paris, under Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, and at Leiden, under Paul Hermann, between studying for the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford. He was elected to St. John's College, Oxford, in 1683, but his fellowship was declared void in 1703 due to his continual absence from Oxford. His absence was caused firstly by his studies at Paris and Leiden, and latterly by his employment as a tutor, 1690-1702, and as Consul of the Levant Company, 1703-17. These positions enabled Sherard to undertake several botanical excursions; he collected plants in the Alps, in Italy, Greece, and Anatolia, and in Cornwall and Jersey. After the death of his friend and teacher Paul Hermann, Sherard began to edit Hermann's Paradisus Batavus for the benefit of his widow, it was published in 1698. About 1695 he began a revision of Bauhin's Pinax, a classification of plants by genus and species, on which he worked for the rest of his life, though he never succeeded in finishing it. It was partly to assist him in this work that Sherard brought botanist John James Dillenius from Germany to England, and having founded the Sherardian Chair of Botany at Oxford, he nominated Dillenius as the first professor in the hope that Pinax might finally be completed and published. See the Dictionary of National Biography for further details.