130 CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. [^^^^ 



made in treating of the life and labours of the first real observer 

 and true describer of our native species. 



The following brief notice of Dr. Turner, and of his works, 

 is compiled from ' Summarium Illustrium Majoris Brit. Scrip- 

 torum/ by John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, from Thomas Fuller's 

 ' Worthies of England,' from Wood's ' Athense Oxonienses,' Tan- 

 ner's ' Bibliotheca/ and last but not least, the Histories of Nor- 

 thumberland. 



William Turner, as Dr. Pulteney writes, vol. i. p. 59, "was 

 born at Morpeth, in Northumberland, and educated at Pem- 

 broke College, Cambridge, under the patronage and assistance of 

 Sir Thomas Wentworth ;" and Hodgeson, in his ' History of 

 Northumberland/ vol. ii., supplies the following note about our 

 author : — 



" Just at the dawn of literature in England, two stars of pre-eminent 

 histve appeared in Morpetli, — William Turner and Thomas Gibson, both 

 justly celebrated as divines, physicians, and naturalists." 



In Mackenzie's • View of the County of Northumberland,' vol. 

 ii. p. 184, there is a note to the effect that "an Herbal," by 

 Thomas Gibson, still exists in MS. Can any reader of this in- 

 form the public where this early unpublished treatise lies buried ? 



Fuller's notice of Turner, see ' Worthies of Northumberland,' 

 is very brief, very lively, and, like some other articles by this quaint 

 author, is more conjectural than correct. It is not an exhaustive, 

 but it is a very good-natured account of this early botanist. 



" He was born at Morpeth, bred in the University of Cambridge, where 

 he became an excellent Latinist, Grecian, orator, and poet. He was very 

 zealous in the Protestant religion, writing many books in the defence 

 thereof, and much molested for the same by Bishop Gardiner and others. 

 He was kept long in durance, and escaping at last by God's Providence, 

 fled beyond sea. At Ferrara, in Italy, he commenced doctor of physic : 

 there gaining his degree with general applause. He wrote a great herbal 

 and a book of physic for the English gentry, as also treatises of plants, 

 fishes, stones, metals, etc. He afterwards went into Germany, where he 

 lived in great credit and practice, and, as I conjecture, died there in the 

 reign of Queen Maiy.* Reader, I conceive him worthy of thy special 

 notice because he was both a confessor and a physician, qualifications which 



* Neither of the late learned editors of Fuller's ' Worthies ' has thought it worth 

 his wliile to correct by a note the erroneous conjecture of their author. 



