An acute critic,[26] who has taken great interest in all matters connected with the genealogy of Pope, suggests, as “more than probable, that Lancelot Turner himself acquired the property which enabled him to make the purchase of the manor of Towthorpe.” But the fact seems to be, that he had obtained the means of making that purchase by converting into money part of the property bequeathed to him by his father, in the sale of which he had prevailed upon his brother Philip to join. Prior to the year 1602,[27] they had sold to Robert Watterhouse, Esq., the ancient churchyard of Saint Wilfred, and the buildings that stood upon it; and in January, 1604, “Lancelot Turner and Philip Turner of York gentlemen, sons of Edward Turner late of York gentleman, deceased,” conveyed to John Smith and John Sharpe, two York tradesmen, all the remaining property which had belonged to their father, situate in the parish of Saint Helen Stonegate, consisting of nine dwelling-houses which stood in the several streets of Stanegate, Ald-Conyng-strete, Blake-street, and Davygate.
About this time Lancelot Turner was making purchases of copyhold cottages and land at Towthorpe; and from his having sold his paternal property in York, to enable him to become the lord of the manor of Towthorpe, and from his manifest desire to enlarge the borders of his domain there, it might be reasonably inferred that he had some ancestral attachment to that place. There can be no doubt that a family of the same name, who were small landed proprietors, had long been settled there. The baptism of John, son of the Robert Turner, of Towthorpe, of whose will you give some account,[28] is entered in the parochial register of Huntington, on Jan. 11, 1600-1. Robert, the testator, was buried at Huntington on Sept. 30, 1626. In April, 1642, Richard Turner, doubtless the son and executor of Robert, surrendered copyhold land at Strensall, the manor to which Towthorpe is appendant, to William Turner, doubtless his son, and the grandchild to whom Robert bequeaths “the little brown whie.”
Nothing can be more probable than that Robert of York, the father of Edward and the grandfather of Lancelot, sprang from this respectable if not opulent family of Turner of Towthorpe, and, according to a practice very common in those days, had been transplanted from the country to be brought up to a trade in the town.
I have now to bring to your notice a remarkable circumstance which occurred in the earlier part of the life of Lancelot Turner.
You need not be reminded of the bitter persecution of Nonconformists that prevailed in the northern counties whilst the Court of York was under the presidency of the Earl of Huntingdon; and the strict watchfulness which the civil authorities were specially required by the Government to exercise over all persons suspected of any attachment to Popery. At the commencement of the year 1594, the magistrates of York were called upon by the Lord President and Council of the North, acting in obedience to instructions received from the Privy Council, to make diligent inquiry as to the number of gentlemen resident within their jurisdiction who were sending, or had sent, their children abroad under colour of learning languages. In the answer which the Lord Mayor and Aldermen returned to the communication from the Lord President, they certified that Martin Turner, son of Edward Turner of York gentleman deceased, went over the seas about three years before—that he was then at Venice at the University, and learning of languages there—and that he was relieved and maintained by one Lancelot Turner of York gentleman, his brother.[29]
The curious facts thus disclosed appear to me to admit of only one explanation. We discover that in the year 1591, about twelve months after the death of Mrs. Jane Turner, his father’s widow, Lancelot Turner took the extraordinary step of sending his brother, a youth of nineteen, into Italy. We have seen the desire of the father, as shown by the testamentary provision he made for his son Martin, whom he probably designed for one of the liberal professions, that this his youngest boy should be brought up at the university. His solemn injunction to his widow, that she should be “a good mother to the boy and see all things ordered for his most benefit,” was, no doubt, piously fulfilled. We cannot imagine, that when Edward Turner, an officer of the Council of the North, spoke of the university, he had the most remote idea of his son being brought up at a Popish college. Yet we find that Lancelot Turner, the moment he became the youth’s natural guardian, sent him abroad, and placed him at the University of Venice, which was then notorious for being the very centre and hotbed of Jesuitism.[30]
The conclusion seems inevitable, that Lancelot Turner was himself a Roman Catholic, and adopted the most effectual method of having his brother Martin educated and established in the same faith.
Nevertheless, we have some evidence that at a later period he outwardly conformed to the religion of the State. One of the important facts you have brought to light concerning him is, that the royal grant of Towthorpe was made to him just before the Queen’s death. Had he then been an avowed Roman Catholic, or even suspected of recusancy, he would scarcely have obtained such a grant from the Government of Elizabeth. The documents you refer to, showing his residence at York after the accession of James I., testify that he then stood well with the municipal authorities. I may add, by way of corroboration, that in January, 1612, when the royal treasury was empty, and the Ministers of James resorted to the expedient of raising money for the necessities of the State, by sending privy seals into the country, Lancelot Turner was one of “twenty able commoners” of York, whom the Lord President and the Lord Mayor, upon private conference, selected as persons of sufficient ability to lend money to the Crown upon that security.
The touching incident recorded in the nuncupative codicil made by Lancelot Turner in his dying moments,[31] shows the close personal friendship which must have subsisted between him and Sir William Alford; and this gives plausibility to a conjecture, that their families were connected by some tie of relationship: possibly the first wife of Edward Turner was an Alford. The christian name of Lancelot, which Edward Turner bestowed upon his eldest son, and which was afterwards given to his eldest grandson, had been a favourite name with the Alfords. The first occupier of Meaux Abbey, after the dissolution of monasteries, was Lancelot Alford, Esq., who died in 1562, and was succeeded by his nephew, Sir Lancelot Alford, who obtained a grant of the site of the monastery in 1586, and was knighted by King James I., at York, in 1603.[32] He was the father of Sir William Alford, Lancelot Turner’s friend. But another and perhaps the more probable conjecture is, that the intimacy between these two persons had arisen from a community of feeling upon the all-important subject of religious faith; for there can be little doubt that Sir William Alford was a Roman Catholic.
In a petition presented by the House of Commons to King Charles the First, in the year 1626, numerous persons are named, holding places of trust and authority, whom the petitioners accuse of being either Popish recusants, or justly suspected of being such. They do not scruple to charge the Lord President of the North himself[33] with being ill affected in religion; and, among other instances, they allege—first, that in the preceding year, the Lord President being certified of divers Spanish ships-of-war upon the coast of Scarborough, his lordship went thither, and took with him the Lord Dunbar, Sir Thomas Metham, and Sir William Alford, and lay at the house of Lord Eure,[34] whom he knew to be a convict recusant, and did, notwithstanding, refuse to disarm him, although he had received letters from the Privy Council to that effect; and secondly, that he gave order to Lord Dunbar, Sir Thomas Metham, and Sir William Alford, to view the forts and munition at Kingston-upon-Hull, who made one Kerton, a convict recusant, and suspected to be a priest, their clerk in that service.[35]