of Edith moved, and with how much reason the Poet might claim for her that she was, in point of birth, equal to the lady (Mary Lepell), whom his adversary, Lord Hervey, had made choice of to be the mother of his children.

April 10, 1641, William Nevil, of the city of York, Esquire, makes his will. To be buried in the church of St. Helen. To Mrs. Elizabeth Stanhope, the eldest daughter of Dr. Stanhope, Bishop Hall’s Works. “To my funeral expenses, £80; to Mr. William Turner, my godson, £20; and to William Turner, his son, my godson, £10; to Mrs. Turner, his wife, £5, and to the rest of his children £5, to be divided amongst them.” To his cousin Thomas Bourchier, £20; to Catherine Penrose the Book of Monuments, and to her sister Elizabeth Penrose the great Bible, and £10 to each. He leaves plate to Lady Osborne and Dame Mary Ingram, wife of Sir Arthur. To Mr. White, St. Bernard’s Works, and “what I have of St. Augustine.” To Sir John Bourchier’s eldest daughter the great gilt salt, and to the second sister a black silk gown. He had been we see the godfather in two generations of the Turners.

The will of Lancelot Turner gives us the name of the father of William Turner, to whom we must now proceed. It was Philip, but beyond the name I have not discovered anything respecting him. Of Christopher Newton, the father of Thomasine, I can only conjecture that he was the Christopher, son of Miles Newton, of Thorpe in Claro wapentake (by Jane his wife, daughter of Ambrose Beckwith, of Stillingflete), who was aged one year and three months at the Visitation of 1585. Supposing this Christopher to be Thomasine’s father, which can hardly be doubted, she would be allied, through the Beckwiths, with several of the higher Yorkshire gentry.

William Turner, son of Philip, and nephew and principal heir of Lancelot, is styled by his grandson the Poet, “Esquire.” I cannot find that he was ever styled more than “gentleman” in his lifetime, and certainly he does not claim to be more in his last will. He appears to have been young, at least unmarried, in 1620, when, by the death of his uncle, he became lord of the manor of Towthorpe, and possessed of the rent-charge on the manor of Ruston, and of other considerable property. His birth may be fixed with considerable probability in the year 1600 or 1601, and it could not well be later than 1621 that he took to wife Thomasine Newton, his uncle’s favourite, for one son of that marriage was killed in the Civil Wars, and another died in the King’s service, that is, we may assume, between 1642 and 1648. It does not appear that William Turner was brought up to any profession, or engaged in any gainful employment. The first notice we have of him, after the date of his marriage, is only gathered inferentially from the history of his children, viz., from the record of the baptisms of four of them, including Edith, in the parish register of Worsborough, in the years 1641-2-3, and 1645.

Where he had been living up to this period, from the time of his succeeding to the family estate, is unknown to me; it might have been at Towthorpe, or at York; but the determination of this point is not beyond the power of a laborious search, which might bring with it the discovery of some particulars concerning his position and character. One thing is certain, that his wife was producing him almost yearly a son or a daughter, as the four children whom we have mentioned were among the latest born of his very numerous family, fourteen daughters and three sons.

Worsborough is a village in the southern part of Yorkshire, on the road from Sheffield to Barnsley, as the turnpike roads formerly were. It is seated near the stream of the Dove, which flows along a dale called Worsborough Dale, where were several homesteads, inhabited by families of the lesser gentry, some of whom could trace themselves from remote ancestors living in the same vicinity. The inhabitants have long been accustomed to point out one particular house, in which they say the mother of Pope was born. It is called Marrow House; but, whatever may be the evidence for the claim of this particular mansion, there cannot be a doubt that the Poet’s grandfather was for some years a parishioner of Worsborough, where we find these entries in the Register of Baptisms:—