Pope: His Descent And Family Connections Part 2

1641, Nov. 20. Martha, daughter of Mr. William Turner.

1642, June 18. EDITH, daughter of Mr. William Turner.

1643, Sept. 1. Margaret, daughter of Mr. William Turner.

1645, Nov. 25. Jane, daughter of Mr. William Turner.

Thenceforward we lose the benefit of the testimony of the register.

It will be observed that this was while the Civil Wars were at their height, in which two of the sons died, being on the King's side: not that this affords us any hint or presumption respecting the circ.u.mstances which brought Mr. Turner to Worsborough.

Whoever may have been the P. T. who communicated to Curl the particulars before given of the history of the Poet's father and maternal grandfather, they contain, few as they are, one specific statement which tallies with his residence in this part of the county, far from the districts where his estates lay. He was, says P. T., of "Burfit Hall," in Yorkshire. This can be no other place than Birthwaite Hall, at no great distance from Worsborough, but in the parish of Darton. It was the seat of the family of Burdet of Birthwaite--not that of the late Sir Francis Burdett--though Francis was a favourite name with these Yorkshire baronets. At the period with which we are concerned, this Yorkshire family were in great straits, and Birthwaite, in 1643, became the property of an heir of only a year and a half old. Furthermore, their affairs were placed very much in the hands of their relative, Mr. Rockley, of Rockley, which is in Worsborough; and in the absence of any positive evidence, without any choice but to fall back upon conjecture, or be silent, I would suggest that Mr. Turner's residence in these parts of the West Riding, might arise out of some connection with the affairs of the Rockleys and Burdets. Rockley, like Turner, had two younger sons in the service of King Charles I.[3] At both these houses Mr. Turner would be only a tenant.

At what time he returned to York has not been ascertained. The next thing we know of him is that he was living there, in the parish of St. John del Pike, at the time of the Heralds' Visitation in 1665. Next that he made his will, describing himself "William Turner, senior, of the city of York, gentleman." And, lastly, that in 1671, he, or his son William, was living in the parish of St. John del Pike, in a house with seven hearths, one of the best houses in the parish.

Here, as is usually the case in inquiries of this nature, we gain our best information respecting him from his will, which is of considerable extent.

It is dated Sept. 4, 1665. He was then "grown weak and infirm," but still of sound and disposing mind and memory, "humbly imploring Almighty G.o.d to bless and prosper these my intentions and bequests." He gives his soul to G.o.d, hoping to be saved through the merits of Jesus Christ his Saviour, and his body to be interred with such decency and solemnity as his executors shall approve. He then gives all interest in his messuages in Gotheram Gate, York, to his trusty friends Thomas Thompson, of York, notary public, and Thomas Tomlinson, of the same city, grocer, to suffer his dear and loving wife, Thomasine Turner, to take the issues as long as she continues his widow and unmarried ("it being her desire to have no further interest in them than so long as she continues my widow"), and after her death to convey them to his seven daughters:--Alice Mawhood the wife of Richard Mawhood, Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Edith, Margaret, and Jane Turner, equally amongst them. He then gives his manor of Ruston, with its appurtenances in Ruston, Wickham, and Marton, and a rent-charge out of the said manor, lands, and t.i.thes, of 70, to his wife, so long as she continues his widow, and afterwards to his only son, William Turner, his heirs and a.s.signs, subject nevertheless to the charge heretofore made to my son-in-law Samuel Cooper and Christian his wife and their heirs, and to the further charge that he shall, within a year after he comes into possession, pay the sums hereafter mentioned, namely, to his loving daughter, Thomasine Turner, 50, in full of her filial part; to Martha, John, and William Haitfield, my grandchildren, 50 amongst them; and to his wife 40, which is to be given by her among her seven daughters first named in his will. He gives to the said seven daughters all his money, plate, linen, woollen, pewter, bra.s.s, household stuff, goods, chattels, and personal estate, of what kind soever (saving his wife's wearing apparel, rings, and jewels), equally amongst them, for the better augmentation of their portions; desiring and entreating his said wife's great care for their advancement, "considering my kindness and love to her by this my will." He further gives to his son-in-law Cooper and his wife, and to his daughter Thomasine Turner, each twenty shillings, for rings, to wear for his sake. He makes his wife executrix, and desires Thompson and Tomlinson to a.s.sist her, to each of whom he gives a ring. The witnesses were R. Etherington, James Tennant, and Edward Topham.

This will tends to confirm Pope's representation that two of his mother's brothers died in early life. Towthorpe, we see, is not mentioned; probably it had pa.s.sed from the family: but, on the other hand, there seems to have been some addition made to what Lancelot the uncle had possessed at Ruston. This Ruston (for there are two Rustons as well as two Towthorpes in Yorkshire) is near Scarborough, and Brompton, the ancient seat of the Cayley family, as this will plainly shows, by mentioning as appurtenances, Wickham and Marton, in the same neighbourhood. We have already seen that an interest was possessed here, in 1710, by Alexander Pope, the London merchant, and his son, who seem to have intended to sell it to the Vanden Bempd family.[4] It was a valuable property; but we cannot but perceive, when we compare this will with that of Lancelot Turner, that the prosperity of the family had meanwhile declined.

Pope speaks rather magniloquently of the cause of the decline, telling us that "his mother inherited what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family." We are bound to accept this statement; but, in the printed list of compounders, the name of this Mr. Turner does not appear, and I have seen no evidence of any sequestration. In comparing the wills of Lancelot and William, we must not forget that Lancelot's was made at the close of a life pa.s.sed without children, and William's after he had portioned some of his fourteen daughters, and had others still remaining in his house.

These children of his grandfather were the only relatives of Pope in the preceding generation with whom he appears to have kept up much acquaintance; and after he became distinguished in the world, no particular intimacy existed between him and them. We must except, however, his mother, for whom he entertained the highest respect and affection; and who, he says, had lived with him from the time of his birth, to her death at the age of ninety-three. She survived, as we may easily believe, all her brothers and sisters; and of these it now remains to give such an account as the few memorials of them which have fallen under my notice enable me. They are in no respect interesting except as they are connected with the life of Pope, whom it is no exaggeration to designate one of the greatest names among Englishmen, standing, in his own department, with Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden,--men of whom, and whose connections, men now desire to know all that can be known.

Of the two Turners, who died in the service of King Charles I., we have no account even of their names. The other son, named William, left England to serve in the Spanish army, which was also the course taken by one of the young Rockleys of Worsborough, his "coetanean," and probably his friend.

He rose in that service to be what Pope calls "a general officer"; which distinction, if it gave him rank like that of a general in the English service, was one that, in such a controversy, Pope was undoubtedly ent.i.tled to put forward as an honour to the family. I lament that more has not been discovered concerning him, and more particularly that we have not even that slender piece of autobiography, his will. We know, however, that he retained to the time of his death some portion of the family property, and left it to his sister, Edith Pope, perhaps then the sole survivor.

Of the fourteen daughters, it would seem that some may have died in infancy or in very early life. The General used to speak of his _ten_ sisters, and to compare them with the five wise and five foolish virgins, that is, five Roman Catholics, and five of the English Protestant Church; but which, in his opinion, were the wise, and which the foolish, does not appear in the family tradition preserved by John Charles Brooke, Somerset Herald, who was descended of one of them.

To place them in the exact order of seniority is out of our power, though a more thorough search in the Yorkshire parish registers might enable us to do so.

All we can pretend to is to place them in an order approximate to the truth; and I need not apprise the reader that where we have to deal with so large a family, there must be a long interval between the elder and the younger. At the birth of Pope, in 1688, his mother was forty-six, and some of his aunts must have been sixty, or thereabouts.

CHRISTIANA is named in her father's will as the wife of Samuel Cooper. She may be presumed to have been one of the elder daughters, her husband having been born in 1609. He was the famous miniature-painter of the name, and was also noted for his skill in music. His father was a professed musician, as we are informed by Aubrey, in his _Natural History of Wiltshire_. His science may possibly have introduced him to the family of Thomasine Turner, to whom, as we have seen, some song-books were bequeathed by her uncle. Walpole knew of Cooper's marriage, and tells us that he lived long in France and Holland; also, that he died in London, on May 5, 1672, at the age of sixty-three, and was buried in St. Pancras Church. All this may be true; but when he says--"I have a drawing of Pope's father as he lay dead in his bed, by his brother-in-law, Cooper, which had belonged to Mr. Pope," he must be mistaken, as Pope's father outlived Cooper many years. More probably it was of Pope's grandfather, and Cooper's father-in-law, William Turner. Walpole further informs us that the widow of Cooper received a pension from the Court of France, for whom her husband painted several pieces on a larger scale than he usually adopted.

Mrs. Cooper survived her husband many years. We are indebted to Mr.

Carruthers for notes of her will, which was made on the 16th of May, 1693, and proved on the 28th of August following. She desires to be decently buried in the Church of St. Pancras, as near to her dear husband as may be. She leaves legacies to her sisters, Elizabeth Turner, Alice Mawhood, and Mary Turner; also to her sisters Mace (not Marc, as printed by Mr.

Carruthers) and Jane Smith. To her sister Pope she leaves her mother's picture,--(what has become of this?)--a broad piece of gold to her brothers Mace, Calvert, Pope, and Smith; to her nephew and G.o.dson, Alexander Pope (then five years old), a china dish with a silver foot, and instruments which had been used by her husband in his art; and, after the death of her sister, Elizabeth Turner, all her books, pictures, and medals. She makes her nephew, Samuel Mawhood, citizen and fishmonger, her sole executor.

It appears that there is or was a monument in the Church of St. Pancras to the memory of the Coopers, with arms of Cooper impaling those usually a.s.signed to the name of Turner.

Mrs. Cooper was one of the five Roman Catholics. It seems probable, though Walpole does not state it, that Cooper was originally a musician by profession, as his father was, who is better known by his Italianized name Coporario.

THOMASINE, named in her father's will, seems to have left the paternal mansion early; for I find a Thomasine Turner living at the west end of Turnmill Street in 1645, when she was a.s.sessed one shilling towards the support of Sir Thomas Fairfax's army. In 1642, a receipt had been given to the same person for three shillings a.s.sessed upon her for the tenements she holds of Thomas Stokes, gentleman, in the parish of Clerkenwell, for the subsidy of 400,000; and in another receipt for a very small sum to the same subsidy. It is incidentally noticed on this receipt, that Thomas Stokes was a Papist. It is hardly likely that there should be two Thomasine Turners, unmarried, living at the same time. She seems never to have married, and subscribes her maiden name as a witness to Mr. Cooper's will. I place her among the five Roman Catholic sisters.

ALICE is mentioned in her father's will as the wife of Richard Mawhood.

She was one of the elder children, as she was eighty-eight at the time of her death, January 15, 1713/4, and consequently born in 1625. Her husband resided at Ardsley, where he had a good estate, which place being near to Worsborough, we are at no loss to account for the connection thus formed, and may refer it to the period when the family were living at Marrow House, especially as we find that the eldest son, William Mawhood, who succeeded them at Ardsley, was born in 1647, being seventy-eight at the time of his death in 1725; many persons descend from him. But, beside the eldest son, there were eight other children, of whom Samuel, a woollen-draper on Snow Hill, was Mrs. Cooper's executor. One only of these children was a daughter, who lived to the age of eighty-four, dying in 1736, the widow of Thomas Brooke of Doncaster. There was another connection of the Mawhoods with the family of Brooke of Yorkshire, William Brooke of Dodworth having married Alice, daughter of William Mawhood, an alderman of Doncaster (grandson of Richard Mawhood and Alice Turner) by Margaret Mawhood his wife, daughter of William, the eldest son of Richard and Alice. A son of that marriage was John Charles Brooke, the Somerset Herald, a most laborious inquirer into points of genealogy, who has left a large account of his relations, the Mawhoods, from which more might be extracted were I not, perhaps, too sensible how wearisome genealogical details are to many readers. His inquiries about his ancestors the Turners were less successful. He knew the relationship to Pope, but subst.i.tutes for William Turner of York, his contemporary, William Turner of Bilham, near Doncaster, a person of the same rank, but of a totally different family. Mrs. Mawhood may be considered to have remained a Protestant.

ANOTHER DAUGHTER, who must have been among those early born of this prolific bed, seems to have died before her father, who names in his will, Martha, John, and William Haitfield, as his grandchildren.

EDITH, baptized in 1642, is spoken of in her father's will by her maiden name,--in her sister, Mrs. Cooper's will, in 1693, as then the wife of Pope the elder. She died in 1733, the last survivor of the family.

JANE, baptized in 1645, married ---- Smith. Both were living when Mrs.

Cooper made her will in 1693.

ELIZABETH, is named in her father's will, 1665, and her sister Cooper's will, 1693, as unmarried.

MARTHA, baptized 1641, and named in her father's will. Either she or (less probably) her sister Margaret was the wife of ---- Calvert, who was living in 1693, according to Mrs. Cooper's will. J. C. Brooke says that she was maintained in her old age by her nephew, Captain Charles Mawhood, who resided at Alkley, near Doncaster. She was a Roman Catholic.

MARGARET, baptized 1643. She (or Martha) married a clergyman named Mace.

There were several clergymen of that rare name living at York and in the northern part of Derbyshire. She is named in her father's will, and, with her husband, in her sister Cooper's.

Ten daughters have now been presented before us; but Brooke, who professes to write from the information of the elders of the family, speaks of two others, viz., Mrs. Tomlinson, whom we may suppose to have married in the family of Tomlinson of York, one of the supervisors of Turner's will; and Mrs. Corbet, who he says was one of the five Roman Catholics. She was, I conceive, the Mrs. Corbet on whom Pope wrote what pleased Dr. Johnson most of all his epitaphs.

One of the unmarried daughters, Thomasine, Elizabeth, or Mary, must have been the deformed sister who lived with Mrs. Pope, and who taught her son to read, according to the popular accounts of the Poet.

We have thus accounted for twelve of the fourteen daughters. The remaining two we may well believe died in infancy or early youth.

Whatever excellent qualities Edith may have possessed, it would seem that her literary education was not much superior to that of other young ladies of her time, and inferior to that of many. This is proved by a letter of hers, the only one I believe that is known, printed in the _Additions to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq._, 1776, vol. ii. p. 96.[5]

The people of York seem not to have been without a due sense of the honour done to their city in having had the mother of so great a man residing among them in her youth. In some verses addressed to Lady Irwin, a daughter of the Earl of Carlisle, these lines occur:--

York lent us Pope by th' mother's side: But from th' paternal, this our pride Gives Castle Howard: say which here Illumines most the natal sphere.

On the whole, then, it will appear that Pope descended of a _clerical_ family, the members of it being much connected with the University of Oxford; but that at present we can trace him only to a person of his own name, who was rector of Thruxton and prebendary (if the inc.u.mbents are so called) of Middleton and Ichen-Abbots, in the diocese of Winchester: that these, being rather conspicuous pieces of preferment, place him in the higher rank of the clergy of his time, and seem to be but the beginning of the offices he would have held in the Church, had he not died in rather early life, and had not the changes at that time imminent, stopped him in his course:--that, though we cannot ascend beyond him on evidence that would bear a close examination, there is strong presumptive evidence that he was either identical or nearly connected with an Alexander Pope of Oxford, the friend of Dr. Barcroft, and the son-in-law of the famous John Dodd of Fawsley, and the father of Dr. Walter Pope, the Gresham Professor, the Poet, and the miscellaneous writer, who was half-brother of Dr. John Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester, who married a sister of the Protector Cromwell:--that there is no reason to believe, on account of disparity of rank, that he was not of the same stock as the Popes, Earls of Downe, but, on the contrary, that nothing can be more probable than that the family tradition was correct, which delivered thus much and no more:--that his Oxfordshire ancestors did spring, as the Earl of Downe did, from people of small account living at Deddington, near Banbury.

And that, on his mother's side, he sprang from persons who had possessed land of their own at Towthorpe, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, from perhaps an early period, but who, from the time of Elizabeth were lords of the manor:--that one of them who died in the reign of James I. was an opulent person, and intimate with some of the princ.i.p.al families in the county:--that he left the greater part of his possessions to his nephew, William Turner, the Poet's grandfather:--that in his hands the family estate did not receive any material additions, and perhaps rather decayed:--that he had the charge of not fewer than seventeen children, nearly all of whom grew to man and woman's estate:--that of the sons, two died during the Civil Wars, in which one of them was slain, and the other went abroad and served in the Spanish army, and at his death gave property, not very inconsiderable remains of the family estate, to Edith Pope, his favourite sister.

And that, this being the case, there is nothing of exaggeration or of boasting, when the Poet has to meet the charge of being of obscure birth, in a.s.serting that he sprang "of gentle blood."

LONDON; F. PICKTON, Printer, Perry's Place, 29, Oxford Street.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL TRACTS.--I. Agincourt; II. Collections concerning the Founders of New Plymouth; III. Milton; IV. The Ballad Hero, Robin Hood. 12mo. 1849 to 1852. Published by J. Russell Smith.

"WHO WROTE CAVENDISH'S LIFE OF WOLSEY?" 4to. 1814.

HALLAMSHIRE.--The History and Topography of the Town and Parish of Sheffield; with Historical and Descriptive Notices of the Parishes of Hansworth, Treeton, Whiston, and Ecclesfield. Folio. 1819.

GOLDEN SENTENCES.--A Manual for the use of all who desire to live Virtuously and Religiously. 8vo. 1827.

THE LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.--By his Great-Grandson Cresacre More; with a large Biographical Preface, Notes, and other Ill.u.s.trations. 8vo. 1828.