TURNER, Francis (1637-1700)

The road to preferment

Immortalized by Andrew Marvell^‡ as ‘Mr Smirke … the divine in mode’, always treading closely on ‘the hem of ecclesiastical preferment’, Francis Turner is more commonly known as one of the seven bishops, a subsequent non-juror and a Jacobite conspirator. The Prose Works of Andrew Marvell ed. A. Paterson et al. ii. 35–114. With a family pedigree that included courtiers and royalist higher clergy, his life has been chronicled by a range of sympathizers, not least by Agnes Strickland, who revealed Turner’s readiness to take up political (and parliamentary) means for ideological ends. A. Strickland, Lives of the Seven Bishops, 150–1.

Because he died intestate, Turner’s wealth is difficult to estimate, although his determination to settle his financial affairs in the 1690s suggests that he had both real estate and investments worth protecting. Indebtedness (he owed £1,000, mostly to his friend, Peter Gunning, bishop of Ely), together with an awareness of his future wife’s ‘good parts and good nature’, provided the motivation for his marriage in 1676. Bodl. Tanner 40, f. 31. His rapid preferment after 1683 was lucrative and his favoured position guaranteed additional financial benefits: when elevated to Rochester he held in commendam both his deanery of Windsor and his Oxfordshire rectory. Tanner 147, f. 14. In 1691, from exile, he authorized the liquidation of £2,000 of assets to be placed into an interest-bearing account and to avoid going ‘deeper than needs be into the main stock’. Lives of the Seven Bishops, 208–12. Clearly, his total wealth far exceeded that sum.

A fellow student at Winchester and New College, Oxford, with his lifelong friend, Thomas Ken, later bishop of Bath and Wells (another of the seven bishops), Turner almost certainly joined Ken, John Fell, later bishop of Oxford, and John Dolben, later bishop of Rochester and archbishop of York, for secret readings of the proscribed Prayer Book liturgy. E. H. Plumptre, The Life of Thomas Ken, i. 50–51, 85. By the time of the Restoration, already known at court through his family connections, he was well placed to profit from the patronage of his father’s friend William Sancroft, later archbishop of Canterbury, and of James, duke of York, to whom he had been appointed chaplain. Sancroft recommended Turner to his first parochial living at Therfield and by 1669 Turner had been installed as prebendary of St Paul’s, where Sancroft was dean. He remained grateful to Sancroft for the rest of his life. Tanner 34, ff. 58–59. Ambitious, he changed his loyalties from Oxford to Cambridge, moving to St John’s College where he could enjoy the weighty patronage of Peter Gunning. In a break with tradition (given that he was not a Cambridge graduate), he succeeded Gunning as master of the college.

By May 1671 Turner was canvassing support (ultimately unsuccessfully) in the Cambridge colleges on behalf of Henry Bennet, Baron Arlington, against George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, for the chancellorship. He remained close to the secretaries of state (particularly Sir Leoline Jenkins^‡), to whom he communicated details of university life, exchanged reciprocal favours over appointments, and complained about ‘impudent’ conventiclers. CSP Dom. 1671, pp. 106, 148, 528; 1676–7, p. 32.

At the heart of the ecclesiastical establishment, Turner supported the crusade to maintain the political supremacy of the Church of England. In 1674 (at the behest of George Morley, bishop of Winchester) he wrote to Sancroft with proposals to remove ‘the insupportable clamour of the people against the bishops’ by publishing the speech that Sancroft had made at his admission as prolocutor of Convocation because he had ‘hinted in it many excellent things in order to the restoring our discipline and maintaining our doctrine’. He also kept abreast of parliamentary business, hoping that it would ‘not fly so high as … last session into negative votes against money’. He established contacts in both the Commons and Lords through those members who visited him frequently at St Paul’s to discuss the rebuilding project. Tanner 42, ff. 75, 80. As chaplain to the duke of York he was well aware of the possibility that Charles II would be succeeded by a Catholic; in January 1675, in the course of a letter discussing his financial affairs, he wrote that ‘if there should come a time when I should be dispossessed of all my ecclesiastical preferments by a Roman Catholic interest, then I should have thought it no robbery to live upon Abbey land’. Ibid. f. 138.

In 1676, in the continuing attempt to coerce Dissenters into conformity, he published against Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, whose anonymous Naked Truth was part of a campaign to secure a comprehension bill in the autumn 1675 parliamentary session. F. Turner, Animadversions upon a Late Pamphlet Entituled The Naked Truth (1676). Turner, who thought Croft guilty of ‘destructive principles’, evoked a predictably vicious reply from Andrew Marvell, in which Turner (still York’s loyal domestic chaplain) was lampooned as chaplain to ‘Sir Fopling Flutter’ (an iconic comedy character created by Sir George Etherege). Marvell criticized Turner’s arrogance in assuming that both Houses of Parliament would have the publication burned by the hangman. What, wondered Marvell, had Turner ‘to do … with Parliament business … how can so thin a skull comprehend or divine … the wisdom of the nation?’ In April, in private correspondence, Turner elaborated his criticism of Croft’s ‘crooked ways’ and defended at length his arguments that Dissenters must be coerced into ‘faith by … hearing’. Bodl. Rawl. Letters 93, f. 114; Rawl. Letters 99, f. 72; Prose Works of Andrew Marvell, ii. 47–48.

By the time of the Popish Plot, Turner, perpetually concerned with security and instructing his correspondents to burn his letters, recommended to Sancroft the efforts of Thomas Butler, earl of Ossery [I] (who sat in the House as Butler of Moore Park), for the Church while the latter was in service in the Low Countries. Tanner 39, f. 97. The plot had direct implications for Turner as vice-chancellor of Cambridge in the subsequent parliamentary elections in February 1679. With James Scott, duke of Monmouth, as Cambridge University chancellor, Turner was active in opposing Monmouth’s attempts to have exclusionists returned for the two university seats in the Commons. Throughout the election campaign he was in touch with Sancroft (again concerned to have his letters burned) to discuss the latter’s ‘wise expedient’ of ensuring the election of the sitting members (Sir Charles Wheler^‡, bt. and Thomas Crouch^‡) and the obstacles to such an outcome. Several college heads had already contracted prior electoral engagements on account of various ‘hooked’ benefactions. In the event, Sir Thomas Exton^‡ and Monmouth’s secretary, James Vernon^‡, were returned for the two university seats. HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 148–9; Tanner 39, f. 171.

Parliamentary elections in the summer of 1679 witnessed royal interference (with Turner’s support) for the return of Exton together with the king’s nominee, Sir William Temple^‡, for Cambridge University. Turner, who claimed that the university was ‘so well affected … that nobody … expresses himself dissatisfied at his majesty’s interposing on this occasion’, secured Sancroft’s support for the king’s candidate despite Gunning’s opposition to a man reputed to be an atheist. HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 148–9; iii. 544–5; Tanner 38, f. 64. Consistently loyal to the duke of York, Turner followed him into his Scottish exile in or about November 1679. Before his departure he told Sancroft of York’s ‘most vehement protestations to me of his equity and compassion for the Church of England, without which he declared it impossible for the monarchy to subsist one hour’. Tanner 38, f. 148; Tanner 157, f. 169. At some point after the rejection of the Exclusion bill in the House of Lords on 15 Nov. 1680, Turner became convinced that the tide of opinion was turning, that

the republican plots and conspiracies to destroy the government were so transparent, that as one nail drives out another they had put the danger of popery out of men’s heads and … scarce left room in our thoughts but how to preserve the monarchy and the Church against their machinations. Bodl. Rawl. Letters 99, f. 111.

In January 1681 Turner was back in London, where he preached the martyrdom sermon before the king. F. Turner, A Sermon Preached before the King on the 30/1 of January 1680/1 (1681). A month later, Robert Brady^‡ (master of Caius) and Sir Thomas Exton were returned for Cambridge University, but Turner’s involvement in the elections is unclear. By June he was back in Edinburgh, whence he informed Sancroft that York had placed his hopes on the Church of England and the ‘episcopal party’ (especially the bishops), and looked to Sancroft to advise the king ‘to be steady in well-chosen resolutions … and … to stick to his old friends’. Tanner 36, ff. 31–32. In July 1681 it was reported that York was allowing Turner to ‘officiate personally’ within his household and to say grace at mealtimes. It is difficult to be sure that any credence should be attached to this claim since the same writer reported that York attended Anglican services twice a day and was prepared to take the Test. Castle Ashby mss, 1092. From Scotland, Turner conveyed news and requests between Sancroft and York; Tanner 36, f. 99. with his close connections to both universities and to the court, Turner emerged as one of Sancroft’s closest allies in the formation of a Yorkist alliance.

Bishop of Rochester and Ely

By June 1682 Turner was back in England. In July 1683 Sancroft told him of the proposal to elevate him to the see of Rochester. The following month Turner insisted that, before kissing hands for the post, he should be presented by Sancroft, ‘that it may be understood to whom I owe my promotion and not to the partiality of my master’. Tanner 34, ff. 58–59, 115. In September, following the foiling of the Rye House Plot, he preached a thanksgiving sermon before the king in Winchester cathedral, leading to a belief that he was also after the post of lord high almoner. Turner denied that he had ever made such a request either directly or indirectly but, despite the worries of the previous holder, John Dolben of York, that ‘coming so suddenly it will bring envy with it’, he was appointed to the post by February 1684. F. Turner, A Sermon Preach’d before the King in the Cathedral Church of Winchester, (1683); Tanner 34, ff. 142–3, 204, 275.

Turner was now approaching the peak of his political influence. He preached before the king on Easter Day 1684 and on the following day before the lord mayor of London. F. Turner, A Sermon Preached before the King, on Easter-Day, 1684 (1684); A Sermon Preach’d before the Right Honourable Sir Henry Tulse, Lord Mayor of the City of London (1684). In April of that year he acted as intermediary between Sancroft and the royal brothers to secure the translation of John Lake, from Man to Bristol. Tanner, 32, f. 37. To the acute (but disguised) disappointment of Laurence Womock, bishop of St Davids, Turner was translated to Ely in the summer of 1684. Ibid. f. 89; Bodl. Rawl. Letters 93, f. 290. This translation allowed Sancroft to develop Turner’s role not only as an agent at court but as his effective deputy. Again acting for Sancroft, Turner lobbied the king for support for action to discipline the royal favourite Thomas Wood, the recalcitrant bishop of Lichfield, who was notorious for diocesan neglect. Tanner 32, f. 97; Tanner 104, ff. 137–44, 311–13; Tanner 131, f. 115. Preaching the traditional anti-Catholic sermon at Whitehall on 5 Nov. 1684 and the martyrdom sermon in January 1685, Turner was at Whitehall during the king’s final illness. F. Turner, A Sermon Preached before the King at White-Hall, November 5. 1684 (1685); A Sermon Preached before the King on the 30th of January, 1684/5 (1685); Tanner 32, f. 212.

On his accession, James II assured both Turner and Sancroft that he would continue to ‘defend and support’ the Church of England. HMC Buccleuch, i. 215; TNA, PC 2/71, p. 1. On 23 Apr. 1685 Turner preached the coronation sermon. F. Turner, A Sermon Preached before Their Majesties K. James II. and Q. Mary at their Coronation (1685). Almost two years after being elevated to the episcopate, he took his seat in the House on 19 May 1685, the first day of the new Parliament, and attended every available sitting. Given Turner’s propensity for political activism, his future parliamentary career would undoubtedly have been far more active had he not been prevented by subsequent events. During his first parliamentary session he was named to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions and to 12 select committees. No other evidence survives of his involvement in the business of the House but he maintained a high profile in political and ecclesiastical circles in London. He was still in a position of influence at court in respect of ecclesiastical preferments and was sought out by a desperate William Beaw, in the hope that Turner may be able to secure the petitioner’s translation from Llandaff. Tanner 31, ff. 117, 150; Rawl. Letters 94, f. 29. On 14 July 1685 he was given the task of informing Monmouth (with whom he had a cordial relationship) that he would be executed the following day. Turner was permitted to escort the duke’s children to and from the Tower and was one of the bishops who attended Monmouth on the scaffold. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 353.

In August 1685, when the unpopular Samuel Parker, (later bishop of Oxford), surrendered his prebend to the secretary of state instead of to his archbishop, Turner encouraged Sancroft to believe that James II would support him against such a ‘worthless fellow’, not least because the king hated insolence to a superior. The prebend was nevertheless filled by Parker’s nominee, John Bradford, in October. Tanner 31, ff. 176, 177, 206; CCED. Meanwhile, in September 1685, rumour had it that Turner was under consideration for the lord keepership, but he was in competition with rivals Robert Sawyer^‡, the attorney general, and the ultimately successful candidate, George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys. Verney ms mic. M636/40, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 10 Sept. 1685; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iii. 35. At this point Turner still seemed to be in a position of influence both at court and at Lambeth. He certainly seems to have been regarded as the king’s loyal ally by Henry Compton, bishop of London. In January 1686 Turner complained of Compton’s ‘affronting me perpetually’ in public. Tanner 31, f. 244. While Compton was facing the ill will of the ecclesiastical commission, Turner continued as usual. He maintained his diocese, circulated a brief to his clergy about the French Protestants, and observed with concern the spate of conversions to Catholicism at Oxford, while acting as a royal appointee to visit and examine the building improvements at Lambeth (together with Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham, and Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester). Tanner 30, f. 11; HMC Downshire, i. 175; CSP Dom. 1686–7, pp. 125, 126. He acted as an intermediary between Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, and Sancroft, forwarding the former’s letters on Irish ecclesiastical matters, and was tipped as a contender to succeed the ailing John Dolben as archbishop of York. Tanner 30, ff. 18, 60; HMC Downshire, i. 150.

As the religious character of the court altered, Turner’s position became less secure. In June 1686, it was rumoured he was facing dismissal from his post as lord high almoner. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iii. 135, 145. Clearly feeling under pressure, he forwarded to Sancroft his visitation articles and an accompanying letter to let the dispirited clergy see ‘the more we are cramped in our temporals, the more stress should be laid in the exercise of the spiritual power’. Tanner 30, f. 104; Articles of Visitation and Enquiry … within the Diocess of Ely (1686); A Letter to the Clergy of the Diocess of Ely (1686). By 1687 the various parliamentary lists show that he was openly opposed to the king’s policies and to the repeal of the Test Act. The king’s attempt to intrude a Catholic master of Sydney Sussex at Cambridge (with a royal dispensation from taking the oaths) was met by the mutinous fellows with a determination to secure Turner’s assistance. They travelled to London for a meeting with Turner, but had to face the reality that the bishop no longer wielded any influence at court. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iii. 391.

In June, beginning to fear for his own ecclesiastical future, Turner commiserated with Sancroft on the king’s evolving religious policy. The two men had clearly already discussed the possibility of being summoned before the ecclesiastical commission and whether it would be necessary to appear in person; Turner had even discussed the point with Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham. He was also concerned that the bishops would be required to give formal thanks for the king’s first Declaration of Indulgence; the declaration, he claimed, would soon reveal its ‘ugly shape [once] taken out of the palliating dress which has made it the greater snare to many’. So out of touch was he with developments at court that he had to ask Henry Paman whether it was true that Jeffeys was about to be made vicar general. Tanner 29, ff. 34, 64. By November 1687, in the king’s personal bad books for undermining his attempt to convert Princess Anne, Turner lost his post as lord high almoner. Verney ms mic. M636/42, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney , 23 Nov. 1687; Sainty and Bucholz, Royal Household, i. 245–7. Yet Sancroft still laboured under the impression that Turner retained influence and was ‘fifty times … more proper’ to achieve a goal than the archbishop himself. Tanner 29, f. 119.

With the issuing of the second Declaration of Indulgence, Turner became actively involved in meetings of the London clergy to resist the king’s attempt to secure religious toleration. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 260. Simon Patrick, who would replace Turner at Ely after the Revolution, recorded that there were many meetings to discuss the declaration, two of them at Ely House with Turner, and Turner was present at the meetings on 12 and 16 May that were held at Lambeth and Clarendon’s house respectively. Turner became one of the seven bishops whose petition against the reading of the Declaration was condemned by the king in words variously reported as ‘a step to rebellion’ or ‘a standard to rebellion’. As one who had benefited from James II’s support and patronage, Turner became the subject of the king’s particular anger. Preparing for their interview by the Privy Council on 6 June 1688, Turner, Ken, William Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph, and Thomas White, bishop of Peterborough, borrowed a selection of parliamentary journals from Clarendon; Turner also took legal advice and told Sancroft that ‘All our wise friends are of the mind that we should give no recognizances’. When the seven bishops appeared at council two days later, all seven refused to provide sureties, arguing that ‘there was no precedent for it, that any member of the House of Peers should be bound in recognizances for misdemeanours’. Turner also refused a special appeal from James to submit. Compton obtained guarantors for each of the seven bishops; those for Turner were Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, Charles Montagu, 4th earl of Manchester, and Henry Yelverton, 15th Baron Grey of Ruthin. In the interval between their initial appearance in king’s bench and the trial itself, Turner continued to keep company with Clarendon, the two men dining with Burlington on 19 June. The Works of Symon Patrick, Bishop of Ely, ix. 510–13; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 167, 171–5, 178–9; J. Gutch, Collectanea Guriosa, i. 338–50, 357.

After their acquittal, the bishops’ behaviour became increasingly clandestine. They were all instructed that they should write to Sancroft via a ‘private friend’. Turner was instructed to write ‘in a woman’s hand’ via two women in Ely, one probably the wife of Laurence Womock, the other the widow of John Nalson. Gutch, i. 385. Unlike many of the bishops who sought concord with the Protestant Dissenters to strength the Protestant establishment, Turner looked instead to strengthen Anglicanism by promoting the practice of frequent holy communion in the hope that ‘true lovers of devotion and decency’ would outnumber those who ‘would strip this poor church of all her ornaments’; he remained averse to ‘any overture for comprehension … to offer all our ceremonies in sacrifice to the Dissenters kneeling at the sacrament’. Tanner 28, f. 170. As part of the Anglican propaganda campaign, the future non-juring bishop George Hickes told Turner that it was necessary to publicize the part that he and Ken had played in attempting to secure clemency for the Monmouth rebels ‘and that the numerous executions did not move greater compassion among any sort of men, then those of our communion’. Bodl. Rawl. Letters 94, f. 176r. With anticipation growing of an imminent parliamentary session, Turner received encouragement from a Protestant prisoner in the Savoy, who called Turner ‘a glorious and shimmering light in his own church’ and proposed to produce an anti-Catholic pamphlet dedicated to Members of Parliament. Ibid. f. 180.

On 24 Sept. 1688 Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, summoned Sancroft and several bishops, including Turner, to wait on the king. On 3 Oct. they attended the king and proffered their advice, which essentially demanded a reversal of his Catholicizing ecclesiastical policy. Gutch, i. 409–13. At this point, Turner remained implacably opposed to the government (though not to the king’s person) and advised John Churchill, Baron Churchill (later duke of Marlborough), that to remain neutral in the face of a determined destruction of ‘civil and religious rights’ was to rebel against God. A. Maynwaring, The Lives of the Two Illustrious Generals, John, Duke of Marlborough, and Francis Eugene, Prince of Savoy (1713), 23. Throughout the autumn of 1688 Turner worked to persuade the king to come to terms. He dined frequently with Clarendon, Clarendon’s brother Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, and Sancroft, and on 17 Nov. 1688, in the aftermath of the landing at Torbay by the Prince of Orange, signed the petition for a free Parliament. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 190, 193, 201, 205.

Revolution and deprivation

On 27 Nov. 1688 Turner attended the meeting of peers and bishops at Whitehall. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 353. He and Rochester persuaded Sancroft to summon peers to the Guildhall; Turner prepared the relevant letters with the aim of forming a provisional government or ‘we had otherwise been a state of banditi, and London had certainly been the spoil of the rabble’. BIHR, xl. 106. When members of the House met at the Guildhall on 11 Dec. 1688 he was nominated (with Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, Rochester, and Sprat) to draw up a declaration to William which would explain the rationale for their assembly. The committee had a clear Tory bias and inserted a clause to affirm James’s right to the throne (although this clause was omitted in response to opposition from four Whig peers). Turner was then named to the delegation to present the declaration to the prince. They left the capital the following day and returned on the 14th with the prince’s kind acknowledgement of their address. Kingdom without a King, 39, 70–72; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 378, 380, 393; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 224.

On 17 Dec. Turner led a delegation of bishops to the king ‘and he and they gave one another the most full and reciprocal satisfaction, and parted with great complacency’. Turner believed the king ‘was now ready to make the concessions required by the Prince’ and refused to accept the notion that he cede the crown. Nevertheless when Turner then left London to travel to his former college in Cambridge some thought that it signalled a change of heart and that he intended to go to the prince of Orange. Instead he preached in St Mary’s, Cambridge, on the familiar ‘passive obedience’ text of Romans xiii. 1–2, interpreted by the congregation as a challenge to the invading Orangeist forces. Turner, Thomas Lamplugh, archbishop of York, Thomas White, and Thomas Sprat were now identified as the head of a ‘powerful faction that labours to narrow and enervate the prince’s designs’. On 18 Dec. and again on 21 Dec. Turner was one of several members of the House who waited on the prince at St James’s to offer general congratulations. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 421, 424. On 22 Dec. he dined with Clarendon, Rochester, and Thomas White at Lambeth in an attempt to persuade Sancroft to attend the Lords. The following day both Turner and Clarendon were ‘full of astonishment’ at the news of the king’s second flight. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 233–4.

Turner, clearly aware of the implications, was now even more determined to influence the course of events and he begged Sancroft to attend the lords. Ibid. ii. 234. On Christmas Eve 1688 Turner and Clarendon again begged Sancroft but he refused. In the subsequent troubled debate at the Guildhall the question of whether the king’s flight had created a demise in law and the possibility that Mary be declared queen were raised for the first time. Turner, clearly unwilling to accept the notion of abdication, asked instead for an enquiry into the king’s departure. Together with Nottingham, Compton, Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer, and Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, he was appointed by the lords to request Prince William to take on ‘the administration of affairs’. Kingdom without a King 160, 162.

Over the new year, Turner worked on the best strategy for the bishops to represent to William ‘their sense concerning the king and kingdom’. He and Sancroft wanted to encourage William to accomplish the goals of his declaration: ‘to maintain our religion and our laws that we may be able to go along with you without any breach upon our oaths of allegiance’. Tanner 28, ff. 185, 319b, 320. He hosted a meeting of bishops on 14 Jan. 1689 at Ely House but declined to speak. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 483–4. At a meeting at Lambeth the following day, Turner, Thomas White, and John Lake discussed with Sancroft proposals for a regency as a way of staving off a declaration that William and Mary become king and queen. Evelyn Diary, iv. 613–14. From the start of the Convention on 22 Jan. 1689, it is clear that Turner intended to oppose the seizure of the crown and to support a regency. In the event, he attended only 24 sittings, his political opposition and his refusal of the oaths to the new monarchs ending his role in government.

On the first day of the session, 22 Jan. 1689, Turner was one of the bishops ordered to draw up prayers of thanksgiving for William having been the ‘instrument of … great deliverance’. A week later, furious at the abdication division in the Commons, he spoke early in the debate of the committee of the whole House. The king, he pointed out, ‘was in being and so was his authority, but by reason of a lunacy he was uncapable of administering the government’; a delegation should be sent to James ‘to constitute a regent or viceroy’. He was seconded by Nottingham and supported by several other speakers, the subsequent division on the regency being defeated by only three votes. Eg. 3346, ff. 10–11; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 503; Timberland, i. 339. On 31 Jan. 1689, in a division of a committee of the whole House, Turner voted against declaring William and Mary king and queen and, throughout the divisions of early February, voted consistently against the argument that the king had abdicated. On 4 and 5 Feb. he helped to manage conferences with the Commons on the abdication and on 6 Feb. registered his dissent against the Lords’ final resolution that the throne was vacant. On 28 Feb. 1689, when the House heard the first reading of the toleration bill, he attended for the last time. The oaths to the new monarchs were due to be taken the following day and he was unable to take them.

Turner turned his political energies away from Parliament, arguing with his fellow bishops over the dangers of religious schism and thundering his political opposition from the pulpit. The Remonstrance from the Reverend Father in God, Francis Lord Bishop of Ely, (1689). Summoned to the House, he fled to Warwickshire whence, on 20 Mar., he sought Sancroft’s advice as to his best course of action if he were to receive a peremptory summons, since attendance brought with it a requirement to take the new oaths and ‘it should not be expected that we should come up on purpose to convict ourselves’. Tanner 28, ff. 370–1. By May 1689 he was back in London dining with Clarendon and concerned that Thomas Ken was ‘warping from us and the true interest of the Church’ and might take the oaths. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 275; Tanner 27, f. 32. Absent at a call of the House on 22 May 1689, Turner was suspended from his bishopric on 1 Aug. 1689. Compton and Lloyd of St Asaph administered his diocese, but a sympathetic Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, conducted ordinations on Turner’s behalf, an activity that did not endear him to the establishment. A Large Review of the Summary View of the Articles Exhibited against the Bp. of St Davids and of the Proofs Made Thereon (1702), 436.

On 30 Dec. 1689 Turner attended the gathering of bishops at Lambeth, where Compton and Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, offered to use their interest in both Houses to obtain an act in which the non-jurors, on condition of bail for good behaviour, would retain their existing preferments but receive no further promotion in the Church. The non-juring bishops were already aware of such a proposal and were wary of it. As William Lloyd, bishop of Norwich, had pointed out, there were potential snares since the interpretation of the terms of the bail ‘depends much on the mercy’ of the judges. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 368; Tanner 27, f. 92. On 30 Jan. 1690 Turner defied his suspension and read prayers in public. Two days later he was formally deprived, but protested in Ely marketplace against the legality of the act. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 392; Strickland, Lives of the Seven Bishops, 198. He continued to officiate in Ely House chapel in Holborn, drawing such a ‘great concourse of people’ that the king took notice of it and used Lloyd of St Asaph as a messenger to warn him to desist. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 303.

Turner continued to live in his Putney residence, from where he socialized with other non-juring bishops and with Sancroft, Clarendon, and Weymouth. Ibid. ii. 304–5. Both Turner and Clarendon came under the clandestine scrutiny of Burnet, and both kept company with James Grahme^‡, Richard Grahme^‡, Viscount Preston [S], and Sir John Assheton, all later implicated in Jacobite plotting. Nicolson, London Diaries, 153; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 305, 306, 310. In July 1690 Turner subscribed Sancroft’s printed vindication in the aftermath of the threatened French invasion. W. Sancroft, A Vindication of the Archbishop and Several Other Bishops, from the Imputations and Calumnies Cast upon Them by the Author of the Modest Enquiry (1690). He warned his brother, Thomas Turner (a canon at Ely), that he should take care how he worded his letters ‘for all the snares of death compass me’. Nor should his brother protest at the election of Turner’s replacement since it would help neither of them: ‘be absent at your choice, and as stiff in the knees afterwards as you please’. Strickland, Lives of the Seven Bishops, 212–15. Thomas Turner took the oaths, but maintained an ethos of high Toryism and hostility to the regime, and assisted his brother.

In January 1691 Turner was implicated in a Jacobite plot; his involvement and his assurances to the exiled king of the bishops’ support sparked a flurry of propaganda pamphlets. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 553; The Bishop of Ely’s Letters to the Late K. James and Q. Mary (1690); A Modest Inquiry into the Carriage of Some of the Dissenting Bishops (1691); A Hue and Cry after the Abdicated B— of E— (1691); A Scourge for a Fool (1691); A Dialogue between the Bishop of El—y and His Conscience (1691). He went into hiding to avoid arrest. The existence of a plot and Turner’s role in it has been the subject of historiographical speculation and dispute. Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 70–71; Overton, Nonjurors, 50–51. His letter to Sancroft written on 19 Jan. 1691 shows that he was in communication with the exiled court at St Germain and that he did hope to see ‘another revolution’. He told Sancroft that, although ‘disabled from doing any service at home’, he would now attempt to do his duty abroad; he had settled his affairs and ‘laid [his] design a little better … than the unfortunate lord [Preston] did to get out of their clutches’. Tanner 27, f. 235. The same day, signing himself ‘Fran. Ex-Elien’ (an acknowledgment of deprivation not shared by his friend Ken), he wrote to his maternal uncle Colonel Windebank that he was forsaking public life and going into hiding only because he feared ‘a close, expensive, odious imprisonment, which would almost certainly have overthrown my crazy, weak constitution’. A week later, writing from an unspecified place in Europe and transformed in appearance, Turner wrote again to Windebank, denying that he was in France and refusing to specify his location in case that in itself might lead to conviction. Strickland, Lives of the Seven Bishops, 204–8. On 3 Feb. 1691, Thomas Osborne, the former earl of Danby, now marquess of Carmarthen informed the king that Viscount Preston should be pardoned since he was the only witness against Turner and the other plotters. Preston duly implicated Turner and the others and won his pardon. CSP Dom. 1690–1, p. 244.

By the end of January 1691, as a consequence of the ‘Ely plot’, Carmarthen, Nottingham, and Lloyd of St Asaph were pressing ‘vehemently’ for replacements to the vacant sees. Tanner 27, f. 237. Turner, contacting his steward in England, enquired whether steps had been taken towards outlawry and forwarded complex financial instructions in an attempt to evade the forfeiture of his estate. By April he was fearing a dilapidations suit as a means of extracting more from him: ‘the pretence of dilapidations sweeps all like a Christmas-box’. Strickland, Lives of the Seven Bishops, 208–12, 216. Rumours proliferated that Turner was with Penn in Flanders, or in Ireland attending meetings of those ‘disaffected’ to the government. E. Lord, The Stuarts’ Secret Army: English Jacobites 1689–1752, 14; CSP Dom. 1690–1, pp. 228, 244, 291. That same month Sancroft, pressured to vindicate the non-juring bishops from the suspicions aroused by Turner, insisted that there was no point in making any kind of declaration since nothing had yet been proved against their colleague and ‘should we fall a declaring, and purging ourselves, before we are charged in form, men and angels will hardly be able to pen anything, that will not be liable to a hundred cavils, and in time prove a snare to us’. LPL, ms 3894, f. 7.

On 22 Apr. 1691 Turner was replaced in his bishopric by Simon Patrick. CSP Dom. 1690–1, p. 342. In June orders were given to prosecute Turner and the other plotters with a view to outlawry, but when the bill was presented to a grand jury in October, although ‘pressed … very hard’, Preston refused to testify. Bodl. Carte 79, ff. 369, 440; CSP Dom. 1690–1, p. 548. On 9 Dec. the Commons heard from William Fuller (a double agent) of various transactions in France in which Turner was named, but Fuller was soon discredited and on 24 Feb. 1692 the Commons declared him to be ‘a notorious impostor, a cheat, and a false accuser’. CJ, x. 579–80, 693; LPL, ms 3894, f. 55. Turner spent the next few years in hiding, though it would appear that, despite rumours to the contrary, he was in England all along. In February 1694 he helped to consecrate George Hickes. In May 1695 he was pardoned under the Act of Grace; he sought freedom from harassment if he came out of hiding and approached Sunderland, who informed Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, somewhat cryptically, that he would be glad to ‘ease’ Turner, for reasons that Portland would understand. UNL, Portland mss, PwA 1245/1. Since Turner had never been indicted for his part in the alleged plot and there was no proof that he had ever broken the law by being in France, it is possible that those reasons related simply to the difficulty of framing any coherent or realistic charge against him.

In the spring of 1696, the assassination plot prompted fresh enquiries as to Turner’s whereabouts and an arrest warrant was issued. PC 2/76, f. 391. In mid-December in the midst of the controversial trial of Sir John Fenwick^‡, one of the king’s messengers searching a weaver’s house in Spitalfields ‘missed his man, but found the late bishop of Ely, who went by the name of Harris’. Turner, it seems, was hiding in plain sight, living in lodgings in Lincoln’s Inn. When he was taken into custody, James Vernon^‡ told Sir William Trumbull^‡ that ‘I could do nothing in it’ and his account of the affair implies that Turner was released. Vernon–Shrewsbury Letters, i. 119–20. If so he must have been re-arrested because he was in custody on 23 Dec. when he wrote to Trumbull in a letter that he signed ‘The bishop of Ely now deprived’. In the course of questioning, Trumbull had asked whether Turner wanted to go overseas. Turner replied that he was reluctant to do so and insisted,

that I have lived for the last five years in such retired inoffensive circumstances that … most of my friends believed me out of the kingdom. Privacy, I thank God, is grown to be no trouble at all to me … If I am freed from this confinement I shall be so far from admitting any concourse to me, I mean to live as obscurely as I can in hopes of being suffered to die quietly. If you procure my discharge that I may celebrate the approaching festival with my own little family, I shall bless God. But if I must keep Christmas in a messenger’s house and in a bleak, noisy, narrow room, I will bear this hardship, considering who it was that for my sake was content at this season with a meaner lodging. HMC Downshire, i. 718.

The Privy Council ordered his release on 31 Dec. 1696. PC 2/76, f. 564. In June 1698 he acted as a pallbearer to carry the coffin of his fellow non-juror Thomas White to its grave. He had been refused permission to conduct the burial service and when he and some 30 or 40 non-juring clergymen saw that a conforming priest was waiting at the graveside to officiate they left, causing Dr John Mandevile to remark that ‘it seems the party renounce all manner of communion with any person conformable to the Church and government’. Evelyn Diary, v. 289; LPL, ms 930, no. 24.

Early in 1700 Turner saw his daughter, Margaret (d. 1724), married to the high Tory Richard Goulston^‡ of Wyddial, Hertfordshire. HP Commons, 1715–91, ii. 91. He died on 2 Nov. 1700 in London, his estate passing to his daughter. Burnet, perhaps surprisingly given their political differences, is said to have described Turner as ‘sincere and good-natured’, though of ‘too quick an imagination, and too defective a judgment’. M. Prior, The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior, ii. 101.