Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/362

Turner and has identified him with the mysterious visitor to Lord Downshire mentioned by Froude in his ‘English in Ireland’ as having in 1797 betrayed important secrets to the Irish government, and with ‘Richardson,’ ‘Furnes,’ and other aliases under which he was known to the government, and by which he is mentioned in the ‘Castlereagh Correspondence,’ and elsewhere. For his services as an informer Turner was awarded a secret pension of 300l. a year by the government, which was subsequently increased to 500l. Sir Arthur Wellesley mentions him in a letter, dated 5 Dec. 1807, as having ‘ strong claims to the favour of the government for the loyalty and zeal with which he conducted himself during the rebellion in Ireland.’ According to Mr. Fitzpatrick, Turner was killed in the Isle of Man in a duel with one Boyce (, Secret Service under Pitt, p. 104). The exact date of his death is unknown. It is believed to have been 1810. [W. J. Fitzpatrick’s Secret Service under Pitt; Froude’s English in Ireland; Madden's Lives of the United Irishmen; Civil Correspondence of the Duke of Wellington.]

 TURNER, SHARON (1768–1847), historian, was born in Pentonville on 24 Sept. 1768. Both his parents were natives of Yorkshire, and had emigrated to London on their marriage. Sharon was educated at Dr. James Davis's academy in Pentonville, and was articled in 1783 to an attorney in the Temple. His master died without an heir in 1789, but, with the support of some of the leading clients, Turner was enabled to carry on the business. In 1795 he married and removed to Red Lion Square. When still quite a boy, a translation of the 'Death Song of Ragnar Lodbrok,' which he had probably come across in Percy's 'Five Pieces of Runic Poetry' (1763), attracted his attention to the old northern literature, and he began the study of Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon. He was surprised at the backward state of the philology of these languages and at the neglect which all the ancient materials had experienced at the hands of previous historians, such as Hume (1761). He soon got into the habit of spending every hour he could spare from professional work at the British Museum, and he was the first to explore for historical purposes the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the Cottonian Library. Encumbered as he was by the wealth of new material, he kept a clearly defined purpose ever before him. As the result of sixteen years' study he produced in 1799 the first instalment of his 'History of England from the earliest period to the Norman Conquest,' of which the fourth volume appeared in 1805 (2nd ed. 2 vols. 4to, 1807; 5th ed. 3 vols. 8vo, 1828; Paris, 1840; Philadelphia, 1841; 7th ed., revised by the author's son, 1852). Almost as complete a revelation in its way as the discoveries of Layard, the work elicited from the omniscient Southey the opinion 'that so much information was probably never laid before the public in one historical publication' (, Life and Correspondence, chap, xi.) It was also commended by Palgrave in the 'Edinburgh Review.' An assault upon the authenticity of some of the ancient British poems cited by Turner drew from him a 'Vindication of the genuineness of the Antient British Poems of Aneurin, Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, and Merdhin, with Specimens of the Poems' (London, 1803, 8vo).

Turner decided to continue his history upon the same lines of independent research among the original authorities, and produced between 1814 and 1823 his 'History of England from the Norman Conquest to 1509' (3 vols. 4to; 2nd ed. 5 vols. 1825; 5th ed. 1823). Lingard's 'History of England' appeared in eight volumes between 1819 and 1830, and, with the object of controverting some of Lingard's positions, Turner wrote the 'History of the Reign of Henry VIII; comprising the political history of the commencement of the English Reformation' (1826, 4to; 3rd ed. 1828). The work was in 1829 brought down to 1603 in the 'History of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth,' and was finally issued in a uniform series as 'The History of England' from the earliest time to the death of Queen Elizabeth, in twelve octavo volumes, 1839. The later portion of the work failed to sustain Turner's reputation, and even the friendly Southey expressed with frankness the wish that the style had been less ambitious. Where the field was less new he had fewer advantages over previous writers; his views had little originality, and his treatment of his subject had no superior merit.

In 1829, intense application having considerably impaired his health, Turner retired from business and settled at Winchmore Hill. There he prepared and issued in 1832 the first volume of his 'Sacred History of the World as displayed in the Creation and subsequent events to the Deluge, attempted to be philosophically considered in a series of letters to a son' (London. 1832, 3 vols. 8vo; 8th ed. 1848). The work owed its popularity largely to the author's homiletic manner and devoutly orthodox attitude. After much searching of spirit Turner had risen superior to the sceptical suggestions of