We know two facts about William Sworder. First, it was he who, on 16 February 1706 1705, performed the baptism in St Andrews of the five month old Richard Turpin.
He had also baptized Dick’s elder sister Maria on 28 April 1702).
Sworder, however, would undoubtedly prefer to be remembered as the author of a devotional guide:
A guide to the altar: being a preparation to a worthy receiving the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s-Supper. Consisting of meditations, hymns and prayers, for Morning and Evening, for every Day of the Week; with Devotions Before, At, and After Receiving the Blessed Sacrament. To which is Prefix’d, Large Preface, shewing the Necessity of Receiving the Holy Sacrament.
By William Sworder, Vicar of Great-Sampford, and Hempsted in Essex.
Sworder was an orthodox Christian who preached “solid virtue and substantial Piety”. He was a prolific preacher. On successive Sundays in May 1713, he delivered three sermons on The Unreasonableness and Absurdity of Occasional Conformity which Curtis estimates must each have taken about seventy minutes to deliver. It seems that they were not universally well received as, when he later published them, his dedication to the Archbishop of York states that he did so in order to vindicate himself “from the Foul Calumnies and Unkind Misrepresentations” of some of those who heard them.