I begin this survey with a small group of sermons which, although they barely reach the threshold of our period, yet possess a number of unusual advantages for this study. For one thing, we know their author as well as the occasions and dates of his sermons. They reflect English preaching before our period because their author collected and studied the work of English preachers who were active in the two preceding generations. And they also foreshadow some of the major features of later collections.

John Sheppey was a Benedictine monk at Rochester who studied at Oxford in the early 1330s and incepted in theology in 1332. He then served as prior of his monastery (1333–1350) and as bishop of Rochester (1353–1360), where his tomb and effigy can still be seen. At his death, the archdeacon of his diocese, William Reed, who later became bishop of Chichester, bought three “volumes” of sermons that Sheppey had gathered “in his time at the university of Oxford” and bound two of them together (in MS New College, 92). The resulting two manuscripts Reed then gave, respectively, to Merton and to New College. Thus, we know more about the earliest history of Sheppey's collections than about any other discussed in this study.

Merton College, MS 248, a parchment codex of 225 leaves, is made up of several booklets written mostly in two columns. According to the owner's note, this is the “tercium volumen sermonum per dominum Johannem de Schepeya … pro suo tempore in vniuersitate Oxon' collectorum.”