TURNER, Dr William (c.1604-70), of Richmond, Surr.

The son of a clergyman from Somerset, William Turner matriculated from Wadham College, Oxford, in November 1620 (having been elected as a scholar ‘by letter of the foundress’ in the previous May), and went on to take his BA in 1624 and MA in 1627. Thereafter, he climbed the rungs of the college hierarchy, from fellow to dean to sub-warden, and was awarded the degrees of BCL in April 1636 and DCL in the following August. In February 1637 he resigned his fellowship on marrying a local girl, and from then on concentrated on a career in the civil law.20Recs. Wadham, 57. His warrant from Doctors’ Commons is dated 1637, he was formally admitted in 1641, and was ‘in Commons’ in 1642, retaining his chambers there for at least another 25 years.21Levack, Civil Lawyers, 277; CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 333. Turner’s activities during the civil wars are unclear. Although he did not practise as an advocate at this time, he probably remained in London, and it was said later that ‘at the time of the rebellion he sided with those that were uppermost’.22Levack, Civil Lawyers, 277; Wood, Fasti Oxon. i. 492.

Turner’s legal career finally took off during the interregnum. In October 1651 he was appointed judge-advocate to the court martial set up to try royalist prisoners taken at the battle of Worcester; in the same month he used his position to make a formal complaint about the conduct of such proceedings in previous weeks; and in November he was also advising the council of state on the business of the council of war.23CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 494, 499; 1651-2, p. 16. After the dissolution of the Rump, in July 1653, Turner was made judge of the high court of admiralty on the advice of the council of state.24CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 40, 43. In the new year of 1654 he was also called upon to give his opinion on the case of Don Pantaleon de Sa, the brother of the Portuguese ambassador, who had been arrested for murder, and in May he was appointed one of the commissioners to conduct the consequent trial.25CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 360; 1654, pp. 156, 169. In January 1656 he was brought in to advise on the French treaty, to consider the damages for losses at sea that could be claimed from the French.26CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 133. Turner’s election for the Cornish borough of Bodmin in 1659 is slightly mystifying, but he was presumably one of the lawyers whose loyalty to the protectorate regime was considered more important than any political experience, and who were thus found safe seats across the three nations.

Turner had spent much of the 1650s building up his land holdings in the rather less remote town of Richmond in Surrey. He had purchased his main residence, a house of 12 hearths on the fashionable Marshgate Road on the outskirts of town, in 1650, and in 1652 and 1654 he bought the copyhold and freehold estates formerly belonging to the Payne family.27Surr. Hearth Tax, 155; Cloake, Richmond and Kew, 187, 303, 305. To these he added further small plots, including, between 1657 and 1659, land from the keeper of the wardrobe, Clement Kinnersley, and the Scottish peer, the earl of Ancram.28Cloake, Richmond and Kew, 303-5.

By 1660 Turner was an established part of Surrey society, being named as militia commissioner for the county in March, and he was made justice of the peace in August, soon after the return of Charles II.29A. and O.; C231/7, p. 33. When it came to national affairs, his passage through the Restoration was not quite so smooth. In February 1660 the Rump resolved that Turner should be recommissioned as judge of the high court of admiralty and also appointed judge for the probate of wills, with a salary of £1,000.30CJ vii. 834a-b, 844b. According to Anthony Wood, Turner owed his promotion to the patronage of George Monck*, but he evidently lost both positions in May 1660.31Wood, Fasti Oxon. i. 492. In October 1661, however, he was appointed as advocate to the admiralty court, and became an active member of the Carolean administration.32Sainty, Admiralty Officials, 154. In June 1662 he was involved in deciding how new legislation on prize goods should be implemented; in November 1663, Samuel Pepys consulted Turner over the fall-out of the Bombay expedition, when the East India Company disputed the share of the spoils claimed by the navy; and in April 1664 he was acting as legal counsel in a prizage case.33CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 417; 1663-4, p. 545; Pepys’s Diary, iv. 368. By this time Turner was combining his position in the admiralty court with his role as advocate to the duke of York, and soon reaped the rewards of his connection with the court. He was knighted in February 1664, and in the following April stood, as the duke’s candidate, in a by-election for Harwich.34Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 239. The seat was, however, contested by Sir Capel Luckyn, backed by the local bigwig, Sir Harbottle Grimston*, and a double return resulted, which was resolved in Luckyn’s favour in December.35HP Commons 1660-1690.

Turner was still practising as a lawyer in 1667, when he was again advising Pepys on legal matters, although a reference to him as one of ‘the king’s advocates’ in September of the same year was probably a mistake.36Pepys’s Diary, viii. 579; CSP Dom. 1667, p. 436. He died in or before October 1670. By his will, drawn up in January 1666, Turner asked that he should be buried ‘without any solemnity more than the office for the burial of the dead according to the form prescribed by the Church of England’ – suggesting that his earlier service of the republic had been motivated by pragmatism not puritanism – and he left the bulk of his estate to his eldest son from his first marriage, William Turner, who was then studying law, ‘which I hope he will effectually apply himself unto, and therein by God’s blessing may be a comfort and assistance to the rest of my family’.37PROB11/334/108. None of his sons appear to have sat in Parliament.