TURNER, Dr Samuel (c.1582-1647), of Ceremony Lane, London.

Samuel Turner’s grandfather, William Turner†, had been a botanist and chaplain to Protector Somerset, while his father, Peter Turner†, was a noted puritan and respected physician. Samuel did not share his father’s religious beliefs, as he seems to have been an Arminian, if not a Roman Catholic, and he was dismissed by one commentator as ‘a man of very loose principles’; nor does he seem to have inherited his medical expertise, rather being considered an ‘inconsiderate as well as inconsiderable courtier-dependent’.12HP Commons 1604-1629; Wood, Fasti i. 303; Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 15. Although not a member of the College of Physicians, Turner became a leading medical adviser to the early Stuart court, with patrons such as Queen Anne, the 3rd (and 1st) earl of Southampton and the 3rd earl of Pembroke.13CSP Dom., 1619-23, p. 66; K. Sharpe, ‘Foreign policy and the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624’ in Faction and Parliament, ed. Sharpe (Oxford 1978), 145n. The latter connection would prove the most important. Turner’s election for Shaftesbury in 1626, as a replacement for Pembroke’s secretary, John Thorowgood†, reflected the Herbert family’s seignorial interests in the borough.14C54/3237; CSP Dom.1625-49, p. 113; RCHM Dorset iv. 1559. The connection with Pembroke can also be seen in Turner’s prominent role in the attack on the 1st duke of Buckingham during that Parliament, which resulted in his withdrawal from the House in the face of royal disapproval.15CSP Dom. 1625-6, pp. 281-2; C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621-9 (Oxford, 1979), 289-90. Later in the 1620s Turner remained a controversial figure. In 1628 he stood down as MP for Shaftesbury, to be replaced by Thorowgood.16CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 541. Absence from Parliament did not appease all Turner’s adversaries, however, and in the following year he was interrogated several times by the privy council on an unspecified charge.17C115/M30/8066. It is possible that Turner had been implicated in the ‘conspiracy’ which had led to the arrest of the six members in March 1629, as his inquisition occurred shortly after the refusal of the six prisoners to petition for pardon, and he was friendly with one of the prisoners, John Selden*, who was later to act as his executor.18L.J. Reeve, Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge, 1989), 148-9; PROB11/202/681.

Oddly, involvement in political intrigue during the 1620s did not lead to Turner's estrangement from the royal court. He continued to act as a private physician, with mixed success. In 1630 he was given leave to attend the notorious earl of Castlehaven, incarcerated in the Tower of London; in 1632 he treated the 6th earl of Rutland, whose rapid death was attributed to Turner’s ministrations; and he may have gone to Vienna with the 21st (14th) earl of Arundel in 1636.19APC 1630-1, p. 156; CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 462; Oxford DNB. Turner also remained close to the Herberts. After the death of the 3rd earl in 1630, Turner turned instead to the 4th earl, Philip Herbert*, who was a critic of the crown despite his position as lord chamberlain of the household. Pembroke’s contradictions may have influenced Turner’s own behaviour in the late 1630s. Although apparently opposed to the first bishops’ wars – he excused himself from paying a contribution towards it in April 1639 – Turner accepted the position of one of the king’s doctors during the conflict; and at the end of 1640 he was made a physician to the king, with a salary of £250.20Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 912; SO3/12, ff. 43v, 121, 130; LC5/134, f. 423. When Turner drew up his will in the spring of 1639, he acknowledged his connection with the Herberts by including the 4th earl’s son and heir, Philip Lord Herbert*, as one of the executors.21PROB11/202/681.

Turner was re-elected as MP for Shaftesbury in a by-election on 4 May 1640 – the day before the Short Parliament was dissolved.22PA, Main Pprs. 4 May 1640; Oxford DNB. In October he was returned for the same seat. Although he no doubt owed his seat to the influence of Pembroke, he did not follow his patron in opposing the policies of Charles I, perhaps mindful of his financial dependence on the royal court.23HMC 4th Rep., 26; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1107. In the debate on the raising of money to disband the Scottish army in January 1641, Turner took a hard line against the Scottish army, stating ‘that he would not have us to give till the Scots were returned home’.24D’Ewes (N), 273. Turner’s decision to vote against the Strafford attainder on 21 April 1641 also went against the wishes of Pembroke and his allies.25Verney, Notes, 58; Procs. LP iv. 42, 51. Nor did he toe the line on religious matters. On 7 June, when the case of a group of notorious Brownists was debated, Turner sided with the establishment, and instead of calling the culprit before the House or a panel of judges, he ‘would have a judge and a bishop joined together to examine them’.26Procs. LP v. 18. Turner was also involved in more mundane business during the early summer of 1641. He was appointed to committees to discuss the wine imposts (26 May), and to settle the estate of William Byerley in Leicestershire (1 June).27CJ ii. 157a, 164a; Procs. LP iv. 594. He was also involved in raising money to disband the English and Scottish armies in the summer of 1641. On 5 July, Turner was appointed to secure the contribution from the College of Physicians, and a month later he was appointed to the committee led by Sir Philip Stapilton and Sir Gilbert Gerard, to disband the armies.28CJ ii. 199a, 240a.

The late summer of 1641 saw Turner’s increasing attachment to the king and corresponding detachment from the Herberts. Although he had taken the Protestation on 3 May, Turner’s sympathy with the courtiers involved in the army plot became apparent on 3 July, when he supported Henry Wilmot’s* petition to be released from custody for medical reasons, but when pressed for details, ‘alleged that he could not in modesty declare Mr Wilmot’s disease’.29CJ ii. 133a; Procs. LP v. 482. On 14 July he countered Stapilton’s request that the queen be petitioned not to go abroad with medical excuses ‘that the physicians had certified that it was for her majesty’s health, that the king had acquainted the council therewith’, and he referred the House to Dr Theodore Turquet de Mayerne’s opinion ‘that there was some discontents of mind which he verily believed arose from no other cause than the apprehension her majesty had of her own weakness and danger’.30Procs. LP v. 639. On 2 August, Turner put forward a controversial suggestion in conference that the old courtier, Sir Robert Mansell†, should be the new lord lieutenant of the Isle of Wight.31Procs. LP vi. 173. Turner’s proposal perhaps marks the last remnant of Turner’s affection for the old Pembroke connection: Mansell, like Turner, had been involved in the Herbert-led attack on Buckingham in the 1620s; but with the sacking of the 4th earl as lord chamberlain a few days earlier, the bonds of allegiance had finally been severed.32CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 112; R. Lockyer, Buckingham (1981), 266-7, 314. Turner was in the Commons on 6 August, when he moved that ‘Mr Lloyd’ (either Francis Lloyd or Walter Lloyd, both fellow Straffordians) would be granted leave to go into the country.33Procs. LP vi. 237. Thereafter nothing is heard of Turner until he is listed as being absent from the Commons on 16 June 1642, by which time he had joined the king at York.34CJ ii. 626n. He was not disabled from sitting as an MP until January 1644, and orders for a by-election at Shaftesbury was delayed until September 1645, the writ being issued on 21 October.35CJ iii. 374a; CJ iv. 286b; C219/43/170.

Turner’s activities during the first civil war were determined by his attendance on the king. As physician in ordinary, he was part of the royal court at Oxford, and was sitting in the Oxford Parliament at the beginning of 1644.36Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 573. He was re-appointed as royal physician in May 1644, with the much reduced salary of £50 a year, and held the post at least until the end of 1646.37Docquets of Letters Patent, ed. Black, 396; SO3/12, f. 268v; SP23/125/435-41. In November 1646 he begged to compound for delinquency under the Oxford articles, claiming that he had no income except the wages and pension of his courtly position, which amounted to £250 a year.38SP23/125/435, 437, 441. His case was referred to a sub-committee in December 1646 and in August 1648 returned to Parliament, as he had not paid the moiety of the composition fine.39CCC 1572; SP23/125/437. By this time, Turner was already dead. His will, drafted in April 1639, was unusual in lacking a religious preamble.40PROB11/202/681. He had at least two bastard sons: Leonard, who was reported to be a Venetian galley slave in 1638; and ‘Samuel, my reputed son’, who was mentioned in his will and inherited his property.41CSP Ven. 1636-9, p. 368; PROB11/202/681. The remainder of the estate was left to his brother, Peter, and the eldest son of his sister, Lydia Rogers. His lawyer friend, John Selden, proved the will in December 1647.42PROB11/202/681.