1592, Oct. 3.—Lancelot, son of Philip Turner.1593, Nov. 3.—Frances, daughter of Philip Turner.1594, Feb. 26.—Martha, daughter of Philip Turner.1796, April 14.—Katherine, daughter of Philip Turner.1597, June 7.—William, son of Philip Turner.1598, Oct. 9.—Philip, son of Philip Turner.1603, Dec. 4.—John, son of Philip Turner.
1592, Oct. 3.—Lancelot, son of Philip Turner.
1593, Nov. 3.—Frances, daughter of Philip Turner.
1594, Feb. 26.—Martha, daughter of Philip Turner.
1796, April 14.—Katherine, daughter of Philip Turner.
1597, June 7.—William, son of Philip Turner.
1598, Oct. 9.—Philip, son of Philip Turner.
1603, Dec. 4.—John, son of Philip Turner.
In the spring of 1604, that dreadful scourge, the “Pestilence of the Plague,” which, in the preceding year, had almost desolated the metropolis, made its appearance at York, and continued to rage with unabated violence in every part of the city for several months.[24]Edith, the wife of Philip Turner, and three of his children, were victims of this fatal visitation. The mother died first: the register of All Saints Pavement records her burial on July 9, 1604. The death of her daughters, Martha and Katherine, quickly followed. Both were buried on the 23rd of the same month. John, her infant son, did not long survive his mother; he was buried on the 19th of December.
After this period I have not met with the slightest trace of Philip Turner, or of any of his surviving children, except William, who, we now discover, was not his first-born son. From the christian-name given to Philip’s eldest boy, it is pretty certain that he was the godson of his uncle Lancelot, and had he lived to the age of maturity would have beenpreferred to his younger brother. We must conclude, therefore, that his early death made way for William to become the oldest surviving son of his father, and the heir presumptive of his uncle, who, as we learn from your pages,[25]having no children of his own, ultimately by his will established this nephew in the possession of the bulk of his fortune.
It was but a short time previous to the occurrence of the calamity which deprived Philip Turner of his wife and three of his children, that Lancelot Turner became the owner of Towthorpe.
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 tothe 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 weresmall 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 northerncounties 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 inthe 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 havebrought 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 whichmust 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]
It is well known that Lord Dunbar and Sir Thomas Metham were Roman Catholics. Had Sir William Alford not been of the same religious persuasion, he would scarcely have acted as their colleague on these occasions.
The estrangement of which Lancelot Turner complained, when he revoked his gift of the clock to his “good and worthy friend,” may possibly have been occasioned by Sir William’s dislike of that outward conformity to Protestantism, which Lancelot had found it convenient to assume in his latter days.
Like other country gentlemen, Lancelot Turner had a town-house for his occasional residence, as well as his manor-house of Towthorpe. You show us that in December, 1619, when he executed his last will he is described of Towthorpe; but you think that the codicil, which is dated a few days before his death, was probably made at York.[36]There is no doubt that in his last illness he was residing in Goodramgate, in the house which his nephew afterwards occupied. Part of the street called Goodramgate is in the parish of Saint John del Pike, which was then, as it is now, united to the parish of theHoly Trinity Goodramgate; and I find in the register-book of the united parishes, an entry of the burial of “Mr. Lancelot Turner” on Jan. 16, 1620.
Upon the death of his uncle, William Turner made Towthorpe[37]his principal perhaps his only place of abode, and exactly two years after that event,viz., on Jan. 14, 1621-2, his marriage to Thomasine Newton was solemnized at the little church of the parish of Huntington, in which the township of Towthorpe is situate. The extreme youth of the lady was most probably the cause of the postponement of the marriage (which, as you observe, had evidently been contemplated by the uncle) until the expiration of two years after his death. At that time she could not have been more than fifteen years old. Her father, Christopher Newton, was not of age in 1604, when his father, Miles Newton, died;[38]and it is pretty certain that he was not then married.
In what creed either of the parents of Edith Popewas educated, we have no means of ascertaining, but we may reasonably suppose that their religious faith would take its colour from that which was professed by him of whom they were the adopted children. If the Roman Catholic tendency were less manifest in them, we see it abundantly developed in their numerous offspring, of whom a considerable proportion, we are told, were avowedly members of the ancient church.
The origin of that particular regard which Lancelot Turner had for Thomasine Newton remains inexplicable. His having “household stuff atKilburn,” which he bequeathed to her by his will, would indicate that he had occasionally resided at the house of her parents at that place. The will of either of them might have thrown some light upon these points; but such documents, if they exist, have hitherto eluded our researches.
About thirteen months after the marriage of William Turner and Thomasine Newton, their first child was born. “Christian Turner,[39]daughter of William Turner of Towthorpe gentleman,” was baptized at Huntington on Feb. 19, 1622-23. The second child was a son. On March 30, 1624, “George Turner, son of William Turner of Towthorpe gentleman,” was baptized at Huntington. This was doubtless one of the youths whose “gentle blood was shed in honour’s cause.” About two years afterwards, the second daughter was born—Alice, of whom you speak as the wife of Richard Mawhood,[40]was baptized at Huntington on the 23rd of March, 1625-6. After this time theparochial register of Huntington ceases to yield any information relating to William Turner or his family.
In the same year in which he was married, William Turner made a purchase, with what specific object it is now in vain to inquire, of a house in Stonegate, York. In the deed (dated Nov. 5, 1622) by which the property was conveyed to him he is described “William Turner of Towthropp in the county of York gentleman.” Whatever may have been his motive for purchasing a house in York, he did not long retain the ownership of it. By a deed dated June 5, 1626, “William Turner of Towthropp gentleman, and Thomasine his wife,” transferred all their interest in the property to William Scott of York merchant, and John Lasinbye of Huntington yeoman. It maybe surmised that Scott and Lasinbye were not purchasers, but merely trustees for effecting some charitable or other purpose not strictly legal, which had soon afterwards been brought into litigation or dispute. On June 3, 1630, William Turner, who was then at York, joined with William Scott and John Lasinbye in an absolute conveyance of the property to Robert Hemsworth and Thomas Hoyle,aldermen, and several other persons, also members of the corporation of York. This conveyance is stated to have been made in performance of a decree of the Court of Chancery, dated Feb. 20 preceding, in accordance with an act of Parliament passed in the 43rd year of Queen Elizabeth, intituled “An Act to redress the Misemployment of Lands and Tenements theretofore given to Charitable Uses.” Of this transaction I will not venture to offer any further explanation.
A chasm of ten years now occurs in my chronology. I do not again meet with the name of William Turner until the year 1640, when he was once more a resident in York, most probably occupying the same house in Goodramgate in which his uncle Lancelot lived and died. The register of the united parishes of Saint John del Pike and Holy Trinity Goodramgate, contains entries of the baptism of “Judith, the daughter of Mr. William Turner,” on July 16, 1640, and of the burial of the same child on Aug. 3 in the same year. The removal of the family from York must have taken place soon afterwards. For an account of the circumstances attending their residence in theWest Riding, I need only refer to your valuable tract.[41]
I am unable to give any assistance towards dispelling the obscurity in which that period of the history of William Turner is involved, that extends from the month of June, 1626, when he is described “of Towthrope,” until the birth of his daughter Judith at York in the summer of 1640. It is clear that he was at York in June, 1630; but I have met with nothing to show where he passed the preceding four years or the following ten years. During these fourteen years his wife presented him with two sons and seven daughters; but I have failed to discover the entry of the baptism of any of these children, either at York or at Huntington.
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 descendedfrom 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 fewmonths 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 thestatusof a country gentleman; and in that position, dying childless, was succeeded by his nephew, William Turner, who “made choiceof, 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 ofgentle bloodand of anancient 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 daughterswho 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 trainingwhich 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.
I must not conclude without gratefully acknowledging the kindness of my York friends,[46]who have,with the utmost readiness and liberality, given me free access to the records and documents which form many of my authorities.
I am, my dear Sir,with much respect,most faithfully yours,ROBERT DAVIES.
The Mount, York,April, 1858.
London:F. Pickton, Printer,Perry’s Place, 29, Oxford Street.
Footnotes:
[1]Johnson is probably in the wrong. They are printed as Lady Mary’s in the collection entitledThe Poetical Works of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e. Dublin: 12mo, 1768, p. 26.
It is rather remarkable that we should find in private documents two ladies whom Pope had made the subject of his severest satire, both manifesting curiosity about the contents of his will. Lady Hervey (Mary Lepell) writes on the 20th July, 1744, respecting one clause in it; but she writes darkly, and the editor of her Letters has not cleared away the obscurity. Lady Mary’s curiosity is expressed in letters perhaps not so well known; at least I copy from the originals. They are addressed to her intimate friend the Countess of Oxford.—“Avignon, Aug. 10, 1744.—I hear that Pope is dead, but suppose it is a mistake, since your Ladyship has never mentioned it. If it is so, I have some small curiosity for the disposition of his affairs, and to whom he has left the enjoyment of his pretty house at Twict’nam, which was in his power to dispose of for only one year after his decease.” Again:—“Avignon, Oct. 15.—I am surprised Lord Burlington is unmentioned in Pope’s will. On the whole, it appears to me more reasonable and less vain than I expected from him.” It was from Lady Oxford that she had received a copy of the will. In another letter (not of this series) Lady Mary speaks of having converted an old ruined windmill on the heights of Avignon into a belvedere, from which she says there was commanded the finest land prospect she had ever seen; then recollecting what were perhaps the happiest months of her life (for her happiness is to be counted by months, not years), she adds, “except Wharncliffe.” This “belvedere” must have been on the hill on which still stand the cathedral and the Pope’s palace, now barracks. The prospect, though magnificent, does not naturally recal the forests and moors of Wharncliffe. No traces of the “belvedere” are discoverable.
[2]SeePrivate Memoirs of John Potenger, Esquire, edited by his Descendant, C. W. Bingham, M.A. 12mo. 1841. The editor confines himself very much to the one member of the family to whom the memoirs relate; and we have no notice of any connection with the name of Pope, or of any collateral branches of the Potengers. The Mr. Potenger, the friend of the Dean of Carlisle, is reasonably supposed to be Mr. Richard Potenger, who was elected three times member for Reading—1727, 1734, and again in 1735, when he was re-elected, having accepted a Welsh judgeship. Beatson informs us that on November 28, 1739, a new writ was ordered on his death.
[3]See, for the Rockleys and Burdets, theHistory of the Deanery of Doncaster, vol. ii. pp. 285 and 376.
[4]I infer this from the following letter of Pope’s, possibly the only letter of dry business written by him which has been preserved, printed in the book entitledAdditions to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., 2 vols. 8vo, 1776, vol. ii. p. 30:—“To John Vanden Bempden, Esq., present. Thursday. Sir,—Upon what you told me when I was last to wait on you, I deferred treating further for the rent-charge till you could be more certain what sum you could conveniently raise in present towards the purchase. If there were only three of [q.or] four hundred pounds wanting, we would take your bond; for, as to a mortgage on the rent-charge, my father is not qualified to take it, for by an act of parliament he cannot buy land, though he may sell. However, if you desire to make the purchase soon, I believe I have a friend who will lend you the £1000, on the same security you offer us. If you have any scruple, you’ll please to tell it me fairly; but, if this purchase be convenient to you, we shall think of treating with no other, and be ready upon your answer; since I think what I here propose, entirely accommodates all the difficulty you seem to be at. I am, Sir, your very humble servant,A. Pope.” I conclude this relates to Ruston, the Vanden Bempd’s being then accumulating the estate now enjoyed by their descendant, Sir John Vanden Bempd Johnstone, Baronet, whose beautiful seat is at Hackness, near to Ruston.
[5]The collection of these pieces is usually attributed to Steevens. But I am in possession of a copy which belonged to a person who claims to be the editor. It is handsomely bound, and has this note in his own handwriting on a fly-leaf of the first volume:—“These collections were made by me from the London Museum, &c., and the Preface written by me, W. C.” Lowndes gives this account of the book, “culled, says Mr. Park, by Baldwin, from the communications by Mr. Steevens in theSt. James’s Chronicle, and put forth with a Preface by William Cooke, Esq.” There is an account of Cooke in theBiographia Dramatica, 8vo. 1812. p. 147.
[6]“Perhaps as probable a conjecture as is likely to be made is, that he was connected with the Council of the North, or a successful practitioner in that Court.”—Pope Tract, p. 29.
[7]Another person of the same name was sheriff of York in 1571.
[8]Among the numerous officers of whom the court consisted were two called Clerks of the Seal.—Torre’sMSS.
[9]The mansion in the street now called Lendal (formerly Aldconyngstrete), which was built by Dr. Wintringham, an eminent physician, in the early part of the last century, and is now appropriated to the use of the judges at the assizes, stands upon part of the ancient churchyard of Saint Wilfred, which in the sixteenth century was the property of Edward Turner.
[10]In his houses at York and Heslington the rooms were hung with costly tapestry, and the buffets laden with gold and silver plate. He states in his will, that his plate weighed 759 oz. The Heslington mansion, a short distance from York, was standing nearly as Mr. Eymis left it, until a few years ago, when it was almost wholly rebuilt by the late owner, Yarburgh Yarburgh, Esq. The principal front still remains without much alteration, and presents an admirable example of the sumptuous style of domestic architecture that prevailed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
[11]The testator was the son of Thomas Eymis, Esq., of Church Stretton, in Shropshire, by Joyce or Jocosa, sole daughter and heir of Humphrey Gatacre, of Gatacre, in the same county, esquire of the body to King Henry VI. The testator’s only sister, Margaret Eymis, married Thomas Thynne, Esq., and was the mother of William Thynne, and Sir John Thynne, Knight. She appears ultimately to have become the heir of both her father and her brothers, and thus to have carried all the wealth of the Eymis’s and Gatacres into the family of Thynne. From Sir John Thynne, the nephew of Mr. Eymis, who built the magnificent mansion of Longleat, in Wiltshire, the Marquesses of Bath are lineally descended.
[12]On a plain tomb in York Minster was once this epitaph:—
+“Here lyeth the body of Thomas Eymis, esquier, one of her Majesty’s counsell established in the north parties, and secretary and keeper of her Highness signett appointed for the said Counsell, who married Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Sir Edward Nevill, Knight, and departed out of this life to the mercy of God theXIXth day of August, An. Dom. 1578.”—Eboracum, p. 496.
[13]These Chamberlaynes were a younger branch of the ancient Oxfordshire family of that name. It appears from the pedigree they recorded at the Heralds’ visitation in 1584, that the William Chamberlayne named in Edward Turner’s will was the first who settled at Thoralby, in Yorkshire. It is very probable that he, or his son Leonard Chamberlayne, was in some way or other connected with the Council of the North, which might account for the circumstance of their having granted an annuity to Edward Turner. Thoralby Hall is in the parish of Bugthorpe, of which Mr. Secretary Eymis was the proprietor. Francis Chamberlayne, Esq., the eldest son of Sir Leonard Chamberlayne, Knight (as he is styled in the pedigree), by his first wife, the daughter of Sir William Middleton, Knight, of Stockeld, near Wetherby, was living at Thoralby in 1584. Sir Leonard’s second wife was Katherine, daughter of Roger Cholmeley, Esq., of Brandsby, a sister of Lady Beckwith, the tenant of Edward Turner.
[14]Few persons who have visited our noble Minster will have failed to notice, affixed to the south side of one of the massive piers which support the central tower, a monumental brass engraved with the portraiture of a prim old lady in the starched ruff and pinched-up coif of the days of Queen Elizabeth. The inscription beneath it informs us that this is the effigy of Elizabeth Eymis, widow, late the wife of Thomas Eymis, Esq., deceased, who was one of the gentlewomen of the Queen’s privy chamber, and daughter of Sir Edward Nevill, Knight, one of the privy chamber to King Henry the Eighth. Mrs. Eymis, “the singular good mistress” of Edward Turner, did not long survive him. In her last will, which is dated the 31st of January, 1584-5, she desired, if she died at York or Heslington, to be buried in the Minster of York, nigh her late husband; and she ordered her executors to provide a stone of marble to be set upon a platt, with superscription of her descent, and also the arms of her late husband and her own, graven thereupon. Had her injunctions been implicitly obeyed by her executors, her monument would have shared the fate of that of her husband, and of numberless others which have long since disappeared from the nave and aisles of York Minster. Her epitaph, being written in brass instead of marble, has escaped the wear and tear of nearly three centuries. It is not irrelevant to my subject to introduce here a few of the bequests contained in her will. To “my good Lord of Huntingdon” she gives “one portingue of gould”; to “my good ladie his wife,” her best silver tankard, double gilt; to her brother, Sir Henry Nevill, Knight, she gives her great goblet of silver with a cover, and to her brother, Edward Nevill, Esq., her “jewell of gould with the unicorne horne in the same, maid licke a shippe, and a gilt canne of sylver”; to her sister “Frogmorton, my best tuftafitie gowne”; to her very good friend, Mr. Pailer, “a tankard of silver, parcel gilt”; to Alice Hall, “one morning gown” and 20s.; and to her god-daughter, Elizabeth Darley, one silver spoon. The residuary legatees and executors are Robert Man, and Francis Nevill, the son of Edward Nevill. Witnesses—William Payler, Anne Payler, Thomas Wanton, Alice Darley, John Stevenson, Katherine Blenkarne. We have here one or two facts showing the intimacy that subsisted between the families of Edward Turner and Mrs. Eymis. Alice Hall, one of her legatees, was the widowed sister of Edward Turner; Robert Man, her executor, was one of the supervisors of Edward Turner’s will; Katherine Blenkarne, one of the witnesses of Mrs. Eymis’s will, was a daughter of Edward Turner; John Stevenson, another witness, was most probably the person of that name who married Margaret Willowbie, another daughter of Edward Turner.
Mrs. Eymis had reason to be proud of her descent. Her father, Sir Edward Nevill, a younger brother of George Nevill, Lord Abergavenny, was a distinguished ornament of the court of Henry VIII. in its palmiest days. He was one of “the noble troop of strangers” who formed the royal masquing party when the King visited Wolsey, and first saw Anne Boleyn. A few years after that event, he incurred the displeasure of the suspicious Henry, and was brought to the scaffold upon a charge of being implicated in the pretended conspiracy of Cardinal Pole and his brothers.
[15]A monumental brass to the memory of the testator’s “very good friend, Mr. Thomas Wood,” is still preserved in the church of Kilnwick Percy, near Pocklington, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where he was buried in the month of October, 1584. The inscription has not, I believe, been printed:—
“Thomas Wood Gentilman, who in warfare hath be,He fought in Scotland, in Royall armyes thre,Lyeth now buried, in this grave hereunder.Of Bulloign when it was English, Clerk comptroller;Of the Ward Court, sixe and twenty yeres togetherDepute Receyvor; of Yorkshire once eschetor;Clerke of the Statut, in London noble cytye;Collector of Selby, with tenne pound yerely ffe.For thought wordes or deeds which to God or man were yll,Of bothe he askt forgyveness with glad hart and will.He buylt th’owse hereby, and this churche brought in good case:God grant his wyfe and sonnes to passe a godly race.—Amen.”
In the seventeenth century, Mary Wood, the grand-daughter of this Thomas Wood, and the niece and heiress of his eldest son, Barney Wood, married Sir Edmund Anderson, Baronet, and carried the estate of Kilnwick Percy into that family, by whom it was long enjoyed.
Kilnwick Percy is now the beautiful seat and domain of Admiral the Honourable Arthur Duncombe, M.P. The Rev. M. A. Lawton, vicar of Kilnwick Percy, has obligingly favoured me with a copy of the above inscription.
[16]John Stephenson was the owner of a “capital messuage” in Coney-street, York, which was occupied by himself and Ralph Rokeby, Esq., one of the secretaries of the Council of the North, and which was at one time distinguished by the sign of the Bear, and afterwards of the Golden Lion. In 1614, Margaret Stephenson and her son, John Stephenson (the nephew to whom Lancelot Turner bequeathed all his books, except his song-books), sold the messuage to Thomas Kaye, who established there an hotel which he called the George Inn, a name it retains to this day.
[17]Miles Newton was the name of the town-clerk of York who died in 1550, and was succeeded in that office by Thomas Fale, the first husband of the testatrix. He was very probably the same person who is named in the Newton pedigree of 1585 as the grandfather of the Miles Newton who married Jane Beckwith.
[18]Pope Tract, p. 32.
[19]Mr. John Darley, of York, and of Kilnhurst in the West Riding, was a younger son of William Darley, Esq., of Buttercrambe, near York. His wife was Alice, daughter of Christopher Mountfort, Esq., of Kilnhurst. Mr. John Darley bought the manor of Kilnhurst of his wife’s brother, Lancelot Mountfort, Esq.VideHunter’sSouth Yorkshire, vol. ii. p. 49. Mr. Darley’s town residence was in Coney-street, and it is very probable that he was officially connected with the Council of the North. His daughter, Elizabeth, the god-daughter of Mrs. Eymis, married, for her second and third husbands, Sir Edmund Sheffield and Sir William Sheffield, sons of the Earl of Mulgrave, who was made Lord President of the North upon the accession of James I.
[20]George Hervey of Merks in the county of Essex, Esq., married Frances, one of the daughters of Sir Leonard Beckwith.
[21]William Allen married Jane Beckwith, sister of Sir Leonard Beckwith. He was an alderman of York, and Lord Mayor in 1572.
[22]Eboracum, p. 358.
[23]The will of Robert Gylminge is dated April 20, 1571. “I bequeath my soule to Almightie God and to all the celestial company of Heaven.” He makes his wife, Nicholas his son, Mary, Agnes, Meriall, and Jane, his daughters, his executors; and his brother William Gylminge, and William Alleyne, draper, supervisors. Proved June 25, 1580.
[24]Mr. Drake states, that in the year 1604, the number of persons who died of the plague in York, was 3512.Eboracum, p. 121. The parish of All Saints Pavement lost more than one-third of its population.
[25]Pope Tract, p. 31.
[26]SeeAthenæum, Nov. 21, 1857.
[27]In his will dated 8th Dec. 1595, Thomas Buskell of York, Esquire, speaks of his “house wherein I do now dwell, which I purchased of Lancelot Turner of York gentleman.”
[28]Pope Tract, p. 28.
[29]Corporation Archives.
[30]It appears that during the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, many of the Roman Catholics of York and the neighbourhood chose the city of Venice for their place of refuge. In the year 1581, a person named Richard Collinge or Cowling, and his brother Thomas, the sons of Ralph Cowling, a York tradesman, who was a Popish recusant, were sent over sea, and ultimately Richard Collinge found his way into Italy. Several years afterwards he returned to this country, and, apparently whilst he was visiting his friends and relatives in Yorkshire, corresponded with a person abroad, whom he addresses thus:—Al Molto Magnifico Signori il Signore Giulio Piccioli, a Venezia. One of his letters to this person, supposed to have been written in the year 1599, which was intercepted by the Government of Elizabeth, and is now preserved in the State-Paper Office, contains the names of several persons connected with York and Yorkshire. The most remarkable passage relates to the arch-conspirator Guye Fawkes, who must have been sojourning at Venice at that time. “I entreat your favour and friendship for my cousin-germane Mr. Guydo Fawkes, who serveth Sir William, as I understand he is in great want, and your worde in his behalfe may stande him in greate steede. — — he hath lefte a prettie livinge here in this countrie, which his mother, being married to an unthrifty husband, since his departure I think hath wasted awaye, yet she and the rest of our friendes are in good health.”
The writer’s relationship to Fawkes was most probably through the Harringtons, of whom he also speaks:—“Let him tell my cousin Martin Harrington that I was at his brother Henry’s house at the Mounte, but he was not then at home; he and his wife were all well, and have many pretty children.” By “the Mounte” is meant Mount St. John, near Thirsk, where a branch of the family of Harrington was then resident, one of whom, William Harrington, a seminary priest, was executed at Tyburn, Feb. 18, 1594.Chaloner, part i. p. 304. Mrs. Ellin Fawkes, the grandmother of Guye, was a Harrington. By her will in 1570, she bequeaths a gold ring to William Harrington, her brother Martin’s son. Collinge names several other persons then at Venice to whom he is commissioned by their relatives in England to send messages; some of whom, one cannot doubt, had emigrated from that part of the kingdom to which he himself belonged. He makes special mention of D. Worthington, “whose brother hath sent a letter unto him;” and of D. Kellison, who he wishes to know that “his brother Valentine is in good health.” Dr. Worthington, one of the translators of the Douay Bible, and Dr. Kellison, were successively presidents of the English College at Douay. The letter, which is without date, is subscribed “Yours in Christe, Richarde Collinge.” I am indebted to my friend Mr. John Bruce, V.P.S.A., for acquainting me with the existence of this document, which Mr. Lemon, of the State-Paper Office, very obligingly allowed me to peruse.
Guye Fawkes was not the only native of York who was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot. Edward Oldcorne the Jesuit, who assumed the name of Hall, and was the companion of Father Garnett at Hendlip and in the Tower, was the son of John Oldcorne, a bricklayer at York. He was sent abroad about the year 1584, and was first placed at the College of Douay whilst it was stationed at Rheims. He was afterwards at Rome, where the General of the Jesuits admitted him into their society.Chaloner, part ii. p. 485. He was executed at Worcester, April 7, 1606, as a partaker in the Gunpowder Plot conspiracy.Jardine, p. 210. A name in Collinge’s letter, partly obliterated, seems meant for Oldcorne, and renders it probable that he was then one of the English residents at Venice.
We may be sure that when Lancelot Turner despatched his youthful brother to Venice, he knew that he was not consigning him wholly into the hands of strangers.
In the list of the Romish Priests and Jesuits resident in and about London in 1624, the name of Turner occurs once.—Morgan’sPhœnix Britannicus, p. 437.
[31]“On Monday next after Twelfth Day, 1620, he revoked nuncupatively the gift of the clock to Sir William Alford, saying, ‘he forgets his old friends,’ and gives it to his nephew, William Turner. To this were witnesses, Thomasine Newton, Henry Dent, and Alice Atkinson, who depose that William Turner reminded him that there had been much kindness between him and Sir William. This was a few days before his death.”—Pope Tract, p. 30.
[32]Collectanea Top. et Gen., vol. iv. p. 178.
[33]Emanuel Lord Scrope, afterwards Earl of Sunderland.
[34]At Malton.
[35]Parl. Hist., vol. vii. p. 286.
[36]Pope Tract, p. 31.
[37]At a court held by the lords of the manor of Strensall, in April, 1622, William Turner was called as a copyholder of Towthorpe; and again in April, 1624.
Towthorpe is an insignificant and very secluded village, about four miles north of York, a little off the high road from thence to Sheriff-Hutton. Nothing is now left of the old manor-house; but near to the spot where it may be supposed to have stood, a not uninteresting object still remains, to carry the mind back to the days when Lancelot Turner and his nephew William were the proprietors. This is a sort of pleasance upon a small scale—a quadrangular plot of ground, about fifty yards square, surrounded by a rather broad moat, and thickly planted with fruit-trees arranged with some approach to symmetry—two or three of the outer rows being nut or filbert trees, the rest apple, pear, and plum. The nut-trees are obviously of great age, their stems being strangely contorted, and having attained a thickness seldom seen in this part of the country. The other trees have a less aged appearance; and probably a temple or summer-house may have formerly been placed upon the centre of the little island. A building of this kind, with its accompanying moat, was a favourite ornament in the quaint pleasure-grounds of the Elizabethan mansion. The moat would doubtless form a usefulpiscaria, especially valuable to persons to whom fish was, at certain seasons, an indispensable article of diet. At present, instead of seeing carp and tench, as in former days, quietly gliding through its waters, on approaching the island our ears were greeted with the harsh croaking of innumerable frogs and toads, the sole inhabitants of the moat.
Whilst viewing this now solitary memorial of the past, it was impossible to avoid giving a little license to the imagination, and peopling the tiny pleasance with the forms of William Turner and Thomasine Newton in the happy hours of their courtship and early married life, which were spent at Towthorpe,—she musing over one of the song-books of their uncle Lancelot, which were so significantly reserved by his will for her especial use.
What a contrast is the dull and uninteresting and most unpicturesque plain of the ancient forest of Galtres, in which the countryhouse of Edith Pope’s parents stood, to the glorious vale of the Thames, where her illustrious son solaced himself with his trim garden, his grotto, and his quincunx!
[38]Miles Newton, of Thorpe, in the county of York, gentleman, made his will on May 18, 1604. He desires to be buried in the church of Rippon. He gives to his eldest son Richard the bedstead which was his grandfather Thomas Collins’s. To his son Christopher, a bedstead which was his (the testator’s) father’s. He names his wife, Jane Newton; his son, Henry, and his daughters, Katherine, Johanna, Rebecca (to whom he gives the better of the cushions which was her grandmother Beckwith’s), Dorothy, and Elizabeth. He makes his children, Richard Newton and Christopher Newton, executors; and his brother Leonard Beckwith, and George Mallory, supervisors. Proved at York, by Richard Newton only, April 8, 1605.
Richard was the testator’s son by his first wife, Eleanor, daughter of Thomas Collins. Christopher and Henry were the sons of his second wife, Jane Beckwith. According to the pedigree of the Newtons, recorded at the visitation of 1585, the grandmother of Miles Newton, was one of the distinguished family of Roos, of Ingmanthorpe.
[39]Afterwards the wife of Samuel Cooper. Your supposition that she was one of the elder daughters, is thus shown to be correct.—Pope Tract, p. 40.
[40]Pope Tract, p. 42.
[41]Pope Tract, pp. 34, 35.
[42]Pope Tract, p. 26.
[43]VidePope’s Letter to a Noble Lord.
[44]Pope Tract, p. 32.
[45]The two daughters who became Mrs. Mace and Mrs. Tomlinson, most probably formed their matrimonial engagements at York during their mother’s widowhood. These are the names of highly respectable York families. The Tomlinsons belonged to the trade aristocracy of the city. The Rev. Henry Mace was sub-chanter of York Minster from 1661 to 1680; Thomas Mace, the author of that curious book,Musick’s Monument, published in 1676, was his brother. There cannot be any reasonable doubt that the clergyman named Mace, who married one of the daughters of William Turner, either Martha or Margaret, was the Rev. Charles Mace, one of the sons of Henry Mace, the sub-chanter, who had himself a son baptized by the name of Charles, at the collegiate chapel of the sub-chanter and vicars choral, near Goodramgate, in York, on Oct. 29, 1682. Christiana Cooper, in her will made in 1693, mentions her nephew Charles Mace, although she does not give us the christian-name of his mother.Athenæum, July 18, 1857. Of the death of the Rev. Charles Mace the father, Thomas Gent, the old York printer, in hisHistory of Hull, tells an affecting story. It was, he says, about the year 1711, when the Rev. Charles Mace, Sen., departed this life. “He died in the pulpit; for as he was preaching in York Castle to the condemned prisoners who were to be executed the day following, one of them was so hardened as openly to interrupt and even defy him in that part of his discourse that hinted at his crime. Which unparalleled audacity so deeply pierced the tender minister to the heart (whose melting oratory was pathetically employed in moving the unhappy wretches to repent of their crying sins, whereby to obtain divine mercy), that he instantly fainted away, dropped down, and departed this life, to the great sorrow of all those persons who were witnesses of his holy life and innocent conversation.”Annales Regioduni Hullini, by Thomas Gent; 1735, p. 194. Charles Mace, the son, was also a clergyman, and was chosen vicar of the Holy Trinity Church at Hull, Dec. 3, 1716.
[46]The Rev. Canon Hey, vicar of St. Helen Stonegate; the Rev. Thomas Myers, vicar of Holy Trinity Goodramgate; the Rev. B. E. Metcalfe, vicar of Huntington; the Rev. James Raine, Jun., M.A.; William Hudson, Esq., and Joseph Buckle, Esq., Registrars of the Court of Probate at York; William Richardson, Esq., Lord of the Manor of Strensall; and Henry Richardson, Esq., my worthy successor in the office of Town Clerk of York.