Until Shareshull, very fortunately, helped to throw down a fence in 1309 at the age of twenty or thereabouts, his activities in childhood and youth left no apparent trace in material existing to-day. All that his biographer can do therefore is to suggest reasonable hypotheses based on the present knowledge of medieval education in western Europe, and particularly of the possibilities of schooling in Staffordshire, and of the methods by which lawyers were trained; based also on the linguistic and legal learning shown by Shareshull in his later years.

In recent research it has been urged with great show of plausibility that in about 1300, both on the continent and in England, elementary schools were numerous in cathedrals as well as in monasteries, and that competent schoolmasters not only clerical but also lay were to be found in cities and towns and even in villages. Therefore although education was ‘not free in the sense of being gratuitous’, nor ‘compulsory for children of a certain age’, it was accessible to those who wanted it or whose parents wanted it for them. It is emphasized that ordinarily Latin was studied with great thoroughness for a number of years by youths who were going on to higher subjects, philosophy, theology, medicine or law. It is true that plenty of obvious instances occur to one's mind of colossal ignorance of Latin shown for example by the medieval clergy ; but it must be remembered that priests owed their benefices to appointments secured often through favour, whereas at the bar, now that judges were usually chosen from members of a non-clerical group who had won distinction as advocates, a young man of humble origin like Shareshull had to make his way mainly through his own merit; la carriere ouverte aux talents. He could not afford in his professional work to make mistakes in Latin or in law, or to show ignorance of statutes and of previous decisions or of the intricacies of Ancient Demesne tenure.