TURNOR, Edmund (1838-1903), of Panton Hall, Wragby, Lincolnshire

Turnor was the eldest son of Christopher Turnor, of Stoke Rochford near Grantham, ‘one of the wealthiest commoners’ in Lincolnshire, who sat as Conservative member for the southern division of the county, 1841-47.1Lincolnshire Chronicle, 2 May 1868. His grandfather, Edmund Turnor, had briefly sat for Midhurst, 1802-6.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 419. The Stoke Rochford and Panton line of the family were descended from a branch of the Turnours of Haverhill, Suffolk, whose representative was the earl of Winterton.3J.B. Nichols, Illustrations of the literary history of the eighteenth century (1831), 592.

In April 1868 Turnor, who ‘in early life ... aspired to parliamentary honours’, was brought forward on his father’s interest for a vacancy at Grantham.4Lincolnshire Chronicle, 18 Dec. 1903. A ‘devout churchman’ who ‘was always to the forefront in diocesan affairs’, he vehemently opposed Gladstone’s Irish church bill, declaring that ‘if the Irish church is abolished, I think it will have a disastrous effect on the Church of England and the Church of Scotland’.5Ibid.; Lincolnshire Chronicle, 2 May 1868. He gave his staunch backing to Disraeli’s beleaguered ministry, pointing to the successful conclusion of the Abyssinian war as evidence of ‘how able the Conservatives are to carry on the affairs of the country’, and dismissed the pretensions of the Liberal party, who ‘when they find themselves in the House of Commons, put their promises in their pockets and button up their coats’. Following a rowdy nomination, at which Turnor was ‘imperfectly heard’, he was returned with a commanding majority.6Ibid.

Prior to the dissolution in November 1868 Turnor made no known speeches and did not sit on any select committees. Unsurprisingly he voted against Gladstone’s Irish church bill, 30 Apr. 1868, but he followed the Liberal leader into the division lobby in support of the representation of the people (Scotland) bill, 18 May 1868. At the 1868 general election he came in for Lincolnshire South, where the Conservative vote remained solid, and thereafter gave steady but silent support to Disraeli.

Following his retirement from Parliament in 1880, Turnor devoted his energies to his estates at Panton and Stoke Rochford, where his attention to detail won him ‘recognition as a model landlord’.7Ibid., 18 Dec. 1903. He took a leading role in forming the Lincolnshire Agricultural Society, though, reflecting his parliamentary career, ‘it was not often he spoke at gatherings’.8Ibid.

Turnor died suddenly whilst out shooting at Hatton, near Wragby, Lincolnshire, in December 1903, leaving no issue.9The Times, 16 Dec. 1903. He was remembered as ‘one of the most practical agriculturalists in the kingdom’.10Lincolnshire Chronicle, 18 Dec. 1903.