suffer his dear and loving wife, Thomasine Turner, to take the issues as long as she continues his widow and unmarried ("it being her desire to have no further interest in them than so long as she continues my widow "), and after her death to convey them to his seven daughters :-Alice Mawhood the wife of Richard Mawhood, Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Edith, Margaret, and Jane Turner, equally amongst them. He then gives his manor of Ruston, with its appurtenances in Ruston, Wickham, and Marton, and a rent-charge out of the said manor, lands, and tithes, of £70, to his wife, so long as she continues his widow, and afterwards to his only son, William Turner, his heirs and assigns, subject nevertheless to the charge heretofore made to my son-in-law Samuel Cooper and Christian his wife and their heirs, and to the further charge that he shall, within a year after he comes into possession, pay the sums hereafter mentioned, namely, to his loving daughter, Thomasine Turner, £50, in full of her filial part; to Martha, John, and William Haitfield, my grandchildren, £50 amongst them; and to his wife £40, which is to be given by her among her seven daughters first named in his will. He gives to the said seven daughters all his money, plate, linen, woollen, pewter, brass, household stuff, goods, chattels, and personal estate, of what kind soever (saving his wife's wearing apparel, rings, and jewels), equally amongst them, for the better augmentation of their portions; desiring and entreating his said wife's great care for their advancement, "considering my kindness and love to her by this my will." He further gives to his son-in-law Cooper and his wife, and to his daughter Thomasine Turner, each twenty shillings, for rings, to wear for his sake. He makes his wife executrix, and desires Thompson and Tomlinson to assist her, to each of whom

he gives a ring. The witnesses were R. Etherington, James Tennant, and Edward Topham.

This will tends to confirm Pope's representation that two of his mother's brothers died in early life. Towthorpe, we see, is not mentioned; probably it had passed from the family: but, on the other hand, there seems to have been some addition made to what Lancelot the uncle had possessed at Ruston. This Ruston (for there are two Rustons as well as two Towthorpes in Yorkshire) is near Scarborough, and Brompton, the ancient seat of the Cayley family, as this will plainly shows, by mentioning as appurtenances, Wickham and Marton, in the same neighbourhood. We have already seen that an interest was possessed here, in 1710, by Alexander Pope, the London merchant, and his son, who seem to have intended to sell it to the Vanden Bempd family. It was a valuable pro

1 I infer this from the following letter of Pope's, possibly the only letter of dry business written by him which has been preserved, printed in the book entitled Additions to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., 2 vols. 8vo, 1776, vol. ii. p. 30 :—“To John Vanden Bempden, Esq., present. Thursday. Sir,-Upon what you told me when I was last to wait on you, I deferred treating further for the rent-charge till you could be more certain what sum you could conveniently raise in present towards the purchase. If there were only three of [q. or] four hundred pounds wanting, we would take your bond; for, as to a mortgage on the rent-charge, my father is not qualified to take it, for by an act of parliament he cannot buy land, though he may sell. However, if you desire to make the purchase soon, I believe I have a friend who will lend you the £1000, on the same security you offer us. If you have any scruple, you'll please to tell it me fairly; but, if this purchase be convenient to you, we shall think of treating with no other, and be ready upon your answer; since I think what I here propose, entirely accommodates all the

perty; but we cannot but perceive, when we compare this will with that of Lancelot Turner, that the prosperity of the family had meanwhile declined.

Pope speaks rather magniloquently of the cause of the decline, telling us that "his mother inherited what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family." We are bound to accept this statement; but, in the printed list of compounders, the name of this Mr. Turner does not appear, and I have seen no evidence of any sequestration. In comparing the wills of Lancelot and William, we must not forget that Lancelot's was made at the close of a life passed without children, and William's after he had portioned some of his fourteen daughters, and had others still remaining in his house.

These children of his grandfather were the only relatives of Pope in the preceding generation with whom he appears to have kept up much acquaintance; and after he became distinguished in the world, no particular intimacy existed between him and them. We must except, however, his mother, for whom he entertained the highest respect and affection; and who, he says, had lived with him from the time of his birth, to her death at the age of ninety-three. She survived, as we may easily believe, all her brothers and sisters; and of these it now remains to give such an account as the few memorials of them which have fallen under my notice enable me. They are in no respect interesting except as they

difficulty you seem to be at. I am, Sir, your very humble servant, A. POPE." I conclude this relates to Ruston, the Vanden Bempd's being then accumulating the estate now enjoyed by their descendant, Sir John Vanden Bempd Johnstone, Baronet, whose beautiful seat is at Hackness, near to Ruston.

are connected with the life of Pope, whom it is no exaggeration to designate one of the greatest names among Englishmen, standing, in his own department, with Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden,-men of whom, and whose connections, men now desire to know all that can be known.

Of the two Turners, who died in the service of King Charles I., we have no account even of their names. The other son, named William, left England to serve in the Spanish army, which was also the course taken by one of the young Rockleys of Worsborough, his "coetanean," and probably his friend. He rose in that service to be what Pope calls a general officer"; which distinction, if it gave him rank like that of a general in the English service, was one that, in such a controversy, Pope was undoubtedly entitled to put forward as an honour to the family. I lament that more has not been discovered concerning him, and more particularly that we have not even that slender piece of autobiography, his will. We know, however, that he retained to the time of his death some portion of the family property, and left it to his sister, Edith Pope, perhaps then the sole survivor.

Of the fourteen daughters, ît would seem that some may have died in infancy or in very early life. The General used to speak of his ten sisters, and to compare them with the five wise and five foolish virgins, that is, five Roman Catholics, and five of the English Protestant Church; but which, in his opinion, were the wise, and which the foolish, does not appear in the family tradition preserved by John Charles Brooke, Somerset Herald, who was descended of one of them.

To place them in the exact order of seniority is out of our

power, though a more thorough search in the Yorkshire parish registers might enable us to do so.

All we can pretend to is to place them in an order approximate to the truth; and I need not apprise the reader that where we have to deal with so large a family, there must be a long interval between the elder and the younger. At the birth of Pope, in 1688, his mother was forty-six, and some of his aunts must have been sixty, or thereabouts.

CHRISTIANA is named in her father's will as the wife of Samuel Cooper. She may be presumed to have been one of the elder daughters, her husband having been born in 1609. He was the famous miniature-painter of the name, and was also noted for his skill in music. His father was a professed musician, as we are informed by Aubrey, in his Natural History of Wiltshire. His science may possibly have introduced him to the family of Thomasine Turner, to whom, as we have seen, some song-books were bequeathed by her uncle. Walpole knew of Cooper's marriage, and tells us that he lived long in France and Holland; also, that he died in London, on May 5, 1672, at the age of sixty-three, and was buried in St. Pancras Church. All this may be true; but when he says "I have a drawing of Pope's father as he lay dead in his bed, by his brother-in-law, Cooper, which had belonged to Mr. Pope," he must be mistaken, as Pope's father outlived Cooper many years. More probably it was of Pope's grandfather, and Cooper's father-in-law, William Turner. Walpole further informs us that the widow of Cooper received a pension from the Court of France, for whom her husband painted several pieces on a larger scale than he usually adopted.

Mrs. Cooper survived her husband many years. We are