The greatest name among British herbalists of the Renaissance period is that of William Turner, physician and divine, the “Father of British Botany.” He was a north-countryman, a native of Morpeth in Northumberland, where he was born probably between 1510 and 1515. He received his education at what is now Pembroke College, Cambridge. Pembroke deserves to be especially held in honour by botanists, for a hundred years later, Nehemiah Grew, who was as pre-eminent among British botanists of the seventeenth century as Turner was among those of the sixteenth, also became a student at this college.
Like so many of the early botanists, William Turner was closely associated with the Reformation. He embraced the views of his friends and instructors at Cambridge, Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, and fought for the reformed faith throughout his life, both with pen and by word of mouth. His caustic wit was also used, with almost equal vehemence, to attack the abuses which crept into his own party. A ban was put upon his writings in the reign of Henry VIII, and for a time he suffered imprisonment, but, when Edward VI came to the throne, his fortunes improved, and, after a long and tedious period of waiting for preferment, he obtained the Deanery of Wells. Difficulty in ejecting the previous Dean caused much delay in obtaining possession of the house, and Turner lamented bitterly that, in the small and crowded temporary lodging, “i can not go to my booke for ye crying of childer & noyse yt is made in my chamber.”
A clergyman’s life must have been full of unwelcome vicissitudes in those days, if Turner’s career was at all typical. During Mary’s reign he was a fugitive, and the former Dean of Wells was reinstated. However, when Elizabeth ascended the throne, the position was reversed, and Turner came back to Wells, “the usurper,” as he calls his rival, being ejected. But his triumph was short-lived, for in 1564 he was suspended for nonconformity. His controversial methods were violent in the extreme, and he seems to have been a thorn in the flesh of his superiors. The Bishop of Bath and Wells wrote on one occasion that he was “much encombred wth mr Doctor Turner Deane of Welles, for his undiscrete behavior in the pulpitt: where he medleth wth all matters, and unsemelie speaketh of all estates, more than ys standinge withe discressyon.”
Christian doctrine was by no means the only subject that occupied Turner’s attention. He had taken a medical degree either at Ferrara or Bologna, and, in the reign of Edward VI, he was physician to the Duke of Somerset, the Protector. He had travelled much in Italy, Switzerland, Holland and Germany, at the periods when his religious opinions excluded him from England. One of the great advantages, which he reaped from his wanderings, was the opportunity of studying botany at Bologna under Luca Ghini, who was also the teacher of Cesalpino. Another savant, with whom he became acquainted on the Continent, was Konrad Gesner, whom he visited at Zurich, and with whom he maintained a warm friendship. He also corresponded with Leonhard Fuchs.
Turner’s earliest botanical work was the ‘Libellus de re herbaria novus’ (1538), which is the first book in which localities for many of our native British plants are placed on record. In 1548 this was followed by another little work, ‘The names of herbes in Greke, Latin, Englishe, Duche and Frenche wyth the commune names that Herbaries and Apotecaries use.’ In the preface to this book, Turner tells us that he had projected a Latin herbal, and had indeed written it, but refrained from publishing it because, when he “axed the advise of Phisicianes in thys matter, their advise was that I shoulde cease from settynge out of this boke in latin tyll I had sene those places of Englande, wherein is moste plentie of herbes, that I might in my herbal declare to the greate honoure[18] of our countre what numbre of sovereine and strang herbes were in Englande that were not in other nations, whose counsell I have folowed deferryng to set out my herbal in latin, tyl that I have sene the west countrey, which I never sawe yet in al my lyfe, which countrey of all places of England, as I heare say is moste richely replenished wyth all kyndes of straunge and wonderfull workes and giftes of nature, as are stones, herbes, fishes and metalles.”
He explains that while waiting to complete his herbal, he has been advised to publish this little book in which he has set forth the names of plants. He adds, “and because men should not thynke that I write of that I never sawe, and that Poticaries shoulde be excuselesse when as the ryghte herbes are required of them, I have shewed in what places of Englande, Germany, and Italy the herbes growe and maye be had for laboure and money.”
Turner’s chef-d’œuvre was his ‘Herball,’ published in three instalments, the first in London in 1551, the first and second together at Cologne in 1562, during his exile in the reign of Mary, and the third part, together with the preceding, in 1568. The title of the first part runs as follows, ‘A new Herball, wherin are conteyned the names of Herbes ... with the properties degrees and naturall places of the same, gathered and made by Wylliam Turner, Physicion unto the Duke of Somersettes Grace.’ The figures illustrating the herbal are, for the most part, the same as those in the octavo edition of Fuchs’ work, published in 1545.
The dedication of the herbal, in its completed form, to Queen Elizabeth, throws some light on Turner’s life, and incidentally on that illustrious lady herself. The doctor recalls, with pardonable pride and perhaps a touch of blarney, an occasion on which the Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, had conversed with him in Latin. “As for your knowledge in the Latin tonge,” he writes, “xviii yeares ago or more, I had in the Duke of Somersettes house (beynge his Physition at that tyme) a good tryal thereof, when as it pleased your grace to speake Latin unto me: for although I have both in England, lowe and highe Germanye, and other places of my longe traveil and pelgrimage, never spake with any noble or gentle woman, that spake so wel and so much congrue fyne and pure Latin, as your grace did unto me so longe ago.”
Turner defends himself against the insinuation that “a booke intreatinge onelye of trees, herbes and wedes, and shrubbes, is not a mete present for a prince,” and certainly, if we accept his account of the state of knowledge at the time, the need for such a book must have been most urgent. He explains that, while he was still at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, he endeavoured to learn the names of plants, but, “suche was the ignorance in simples at that tyme,” that he could get no information on the subject, even from physicians. He claims that his herbal has considerable originality—a claim which seems well founded. In his own words—“they that have red the first part of my Herbal, and have compared my writinges of plantes with those thinges that Matthiolus, Fuchsius, Tragus, and Dodoneus wrote in ye firste editiones of their Herballes, maye easily perceyve that I taught the truthe of certeyne plantes, which these above named writers either knew not at al, or ellis erred in them greatlye.... So yt as I learned something of them, so they ether might or did learne somthinge of me agayne, as their second editions maye testifye. And because I would not be lyke unto a cryer yt cryeth a loste horse in the marketh, and telleth all the markes and tokens that he hath, and yet never sawe the horse, nether coulde knowe the horse if he sawe him: I wente into Italye and into diverse partes of Germany, to knowe and se the herbes my selfe.”