Neither have I succeeded in my attempts to ascertain at what time, or under what circumstances, William Turner disposed of the manor of Towthorpe. John George Smyth, Esq. of Heath, near Wakefield, M.P. for the city of York, is the present owner of the estate, which was purchased, in the early part of the last century, by one of his ancestors, from Sir Charles Dalston, Bart., to whom it had descended from his grandfather, Sir William Dalston, the first baronet of that name. The Dalstons were a Cumberland family, and Sir William had most probably acquired the Towthorpe estate by his marriage with Anne Bolles, the eldest daughter and coheir of that singular person, Lady Bolles of Heath Hall, the Baronetess, whose curious history is narrated in your interesting “Antiquarian Notices of Lupset, the Heath, and Sharlston.”
You state that William Turner was living in the parish of Saint John del Pike at the time of the Heralds’ Visitation in 1665, and was one of the persons whom they summoned to appear.[42] The visits of the heralds at York took place in the months of August and September in that year; and perhaps you would not have imputed blame to him for having neglected that opportunity of recording his genealogy, had you been aware that he was then in his last illness, awaiting a more solemn summons. He died within a month after the date of his will, and was buried in the church of the Holy Trinity Goodramgate, on Oct. 3, 1665. Had the heralds made their visitation at York a few months sooner, we should doubtless have possessed their testimony, that the Turners were entitled to take rank among the gentry of York. But it will now, perhaps, be admitted that no such testimony is requisite.
It has been shown by unimpeachable evidence that Edward Turner, the great-grandfather of Edith Pope, was the son of a substantial citizen of York, who flourished in the reign of King Henry VII.; that, having advanced a step higher in the social scale, he maintained during great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the rank of a gentleman, and associated upon a footing of equality with the best of the inhabitants of a city which was then “the glory of the North”; that, in addition to the property he inherited in the city, he acquired lands of considerable value in the county, and these he transmitted to his descendants; that his eldest son, Lancelot Turner, by means of his paternal fortune, was enabled, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, to purchase the manor and estate of Towthorpe, and thus attain the status of a country gentleman; and in that position, dying childless, was succeeded by his nephew, William Turner, who “made choice of, to be the mother of his children,”[43] of whom Edith Pope was one, a lady who was not only herself of good family, but was (as you have remarked[44]) allied with several of the higher Yorkshire gentry.
That genealogical critic must indeed be fastidious, who would deny the Poet’s right to assert that his mother was of gentle blood and of an ancient family.
The baptismal register of William Turner, by which his birth is placed only two or three years earlier than the date you have conjecturally assigned for that event, shows that he was in his sixty-ninth year when he died. His wife survived him nearly sixteen years. “Mrs. Turner, widow,” was buried in the church of the Holy Trinity Goodramgate, on Sept. 11, 1681. Administration of the goods of “Thomasine Turner of York,” who died intestate, was granted by the archbishop’s court to her daughter Mary Turner, spinster, on Dec. 2, 1681. From the circumstance of Mary being the sole administratrix it may be inferred that the only surviving son, William Turner, was then absent from York, and that Mary was the oldest of the unmarried daughters who had remained at home.[45] But there is no reason to suppose that she had remained there alone. We may presume that Edith was one of her companions, and took part in administering to the comforts of their mother’s last hours—in assisting to “rock the cradle of reposing age.”
Assuming it to have been soon after the Restoration that William Turner returned to York, his daughter Edith was then just entering into womanhood, so that for nearly twenty years of the bloom of her life she was domesticated with her family within the walls of our venerable city. Their residence stood under the very shadow of the towers of our cathedral, the parish of Saint John del Pike being usually regarded as forming part of the Minster-close. The neighbourhood in which they lived was crowded with the stately mansions of the dignitaries of the church, the higher officers of the ecclesiastical courts, and many of the wealthy families of the county. We cannot doubt that the Turners moved in the best society of which the city could at that period boast; not so brilliant and dignified as when it shone with the splendour of the vice-regal court of the Lords Presidents of the North; but still aristocratic, refined, and intellectual,—a society in which Edith Turner might receive that training which fitted her to hold converse in after-life with Bolingbroke, and Congreve, and Swift.
When, upon the death of Mrs. Turner, the daughters who had remained under the maternal roof at York had to seek a home with their married sisters in other parts of the kingdom, it was Edith’s lot to remove to London, where she became the wife of Alexander Pope, and the mother of the Poet, whose name you justly designate “one of the greatest among Englishmen.”
It now only remains for me to offer to you my cordial thanks for the valuable information and suggestions with which you have favoured me in the progress of my investigation; and to assure you that I shall feel highly gratified if the additional facts I have brought to light satisfactorily blend with or prove to be in any measure illustrative of those contained in your more important narrative.