The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Zouche, Richard

ZOUCHE, Richard, English legal scholar: b. Anstey, Wiltshire, 1590; d. London, 1 March 1661. He was educated at New College, Oxford; in 1617 was admitted an advocate of Doctors' Commons, and in 1620 became regius professor of civil law at Oxford. In addition to his university duties he had a large practice in London. In 1641 he was made judge of the High Court of Admiralty. He was a Royalist, though not a pronounced one, at the civil war; and, although replaced in the judgeship in 1649, was nevertheless appointed by Cromwell to a special commission of oyer and terminer, and retained his academic appointments. He was regarded with some suspicion by both political parties; but after the Restoration he was appointed to the commission which reinstated the professors and Fellows of Oxford who had been removed under the Protectorate of Cromwell. On 4 Feb. 1661 he was restored to the bench. His writings include a descriptive poem, ‘The Dove, or Passages of Cosmography’ (1613); a comedy, ‘The Sophister’ (1639). and many works of a professional sort, most important of which are ‘Elementa Jurisprudentiæ’ (1629), a general system of legal science, and ‘Juris et Judicii Fecialis Explicatio’ (1650), regarded by critics as the first treatise containing a systematized arrangement of what is now known as international law.