Author: Turner, Baptist Noel
Biography:
TURNER, Baptist Noel (1739-1826: ancestry.com)
Born in Dec. 1739 and baptized 1 Jan 1740, son of the Rev. James Turner (1710-1774), rector of Wing, Rutland, and his wife, Catherine, a daughter of John Crichloe of Grantham, Lincolnshire, Turner was named for his godfather, Baptist Noel, 4th Earl of Gainsborough. Following early studies at Oakham School, Rutland, in 1758 he entered St John’s College, Cambridge. The following year, he migrated to Emmanuel (BA 1762, MA 1765). His college elected him fellow in 1764. Ordained priest in 1764, he gave up his fellowship when, on 11 Sep. 1769, he married, in Salisbury Cathedral, Sarah (1738-1816), the eldest daughter of the Rev. Richard Easton, prebendary of North Grantham, Salisbury. Together they had three children, John (1774-1862), Charlotte (1777-1843), and William (b 1771), his eldest, a captain in the 81st infantry who died in action in 1814. Commencing 1769, he was for almost ten years headmaster of Oakham School. In the same year, his father-in-law presented him to the rectory of Denton, Lincolnshire. In 1771, he was presented to Wing, Rutland, in the king’s gift. Also in that year he became domestic chaplain to Baron Ravensworth. A political and religious conservative (Köster, 341), in 1783 he attacked the political philosophy of John Locke in a pamphlet, The True Alarm. In “Account of Dr. Johnson’s Visit to Cambridge, in 1765,” in the New Monthly Magazine (Dec. 1818), Turner reminisced about meeting Samuel Johnson. Turner’s sixty-nine-page pamphlet, Infant Institutes (1791), is a landmark in children’s literature. It contains the first printed version of several nursery rhymes: “Hey diddle, diddle;” “Hight-a-cock-horse to Banbury Cross,” “Ding dong bell, Poor Pussey has fall’n i’the well,” “Little boy Blue, come blow your horn,” and others. Turner was a friend of the painter the Rev. William Peters (1742-1814). He died in Dorset Place, Marylebone, according to newspaper accounts and GM, on 18 May 1826 (ACAD gives May 13). He is buried at Denton. (CCEd 29 Mar. 2023; ACAD 30 Mar. 2023; PROB 11/1714; Hull Packet 16 Apr. 1816; GM [1826], 467-39; N&Q [1875], 441; R. F. Scott, Admissions to the College of St John the Evangelist [1903], 3:652; P. Köster, Anecdotes of Baptist Noel Turner [1982]; P. Köster, “Baptist Noel Turner's “‘Intelligence of John Bull’: An Allegorical Satire on the Subscription Controversy,” Church History 54:3 [1985], 338-52) JC