207 



TURNER, WILLIAM. 



TURPIN DE CRISSE, LANCELOT. 



208 





self by a love for antiquarian research, and formed a friendship with 

 the two sous of the late Allan Cunningham. With the younger, Peter, 

 his friendship continued until his death. In 1831 he waa taken into 

 the printing office of Mr. W. Nicol to learn the business. While 

 here he employed all his leisure in pursuing his antiquarian and his- 

 torical studies, and on seeing an advertisement for a young man at 

 the Record Office in the Tower who could read and translate records, 

 he applied for and obtained the situation. lie devoted himeelf with 

 great diligence to the study of the records, and his knowledge increased 

 rapidly. He projected many historical works, but his laboxirs in 

 acquiring constantly fresh information prevented his carrying his 

 many plans into execution. From this employment he was taken by 

 Mr. Tyrrell, the Remembrancer of the City of London, to assist him 

 in collecting materials for a history of London, at which he most 

 assiduously laboured, but the information thus collected remains yet 

 in manuscript. When this was completed he edited with remarkable 

 caro a volume of ' Early Household Expenses,' to which he prefixed a 

 valuable introduction ; the work being presented to the Roxburghe 

 Club by Mr. Beriah Botfield. After the publication of this volume 

 he wns made secretary to the Archaeological Institute. While he 

 held this office his readiness in imparting information respecting 

 antiquities was remarkable ; he wrote some valuable papers for the 

 'Journal' of the Society, and communicated several records to the 

 Society of Antiquaries nt Newcastle, which are printed in the ' Arcbse- 

 ologia ^Eliana,' On his retirement from this office, he continued 

 his studies, but commenced his work, ' Some Account of Domestic 

 Architecture in England, from the Conquest to the End of the 

 Thirteenth Century, with numerous Illustrations,' which was pub- 

 lished in 1851. This work, and his papers in the ' Archaeological 

 Journal' published between 1846 and 1851, form the_groundwork of 

 his farae. The papers only amount to five, and one of them is on 

 the diuing-custoins of the Middle Ages, a subject similar to that 

 of his book. This 'Domestic Architecture' is noticeable for the 

 exactitude and wide extent of hi.s knowledge, and is a valuable con- 

 tribution for the student of English antiquities. It does not confine 

 itself to the mere building, but includes a large amount of subsidiary 

 information and illustration mainly collected from our national records, 

 and comprises an account of the furniture; the implements used in 

 the processes of cooking, brewing, baking, &c. ; the state of horti- 

 culture at the time ; with disquisitions on the manufactures connected 

 with the household economy, such as glass, linen, cutlery, c. Mr. 

 Turner's cevere find constant application to his studies had for many 

 years greatly impaired his health, and on June 17, 1852, he died, having 

 produced far less than from his great accomplishments could have 

 been wished and might have been expected. His vast store of know- 

 ledge was freely scattered in conversation ; he had constant applica- 

 tions for iuformati'.n, and few were sent away unsatisfied; but his 

 ardour for accumulation prevented his application to composition, so 

 that of his many projected works the one above named was the only 

 one he executed, and that was in a manner but a fragment : at any 

 rate Mr. Turner promised to carry down the subject to a more recent 

 period, a promise he did not live to fulfil. A second volume has 

 however been prepared and published by Mr. Pai-ker of Oxford. 



TURNER, WILLIAM, a physician, naturalist, and divine, was born 

 at Morpeth in Northumberland, about the year 1 520. He studied at 

 Cambridge, and having taken a very decided part in the great religious 

 questions that were discussed, he made himself obnoxious to the 

 dominant party, and was thrown into prison. After his release from 

 prison he resided on the Continent till the death of Henry VIIL, 

 when he returned to his own country. His studies at Cambridge 

 had been more particularly directed to physic and divinity, but on 

 the Continent he became acquainted with Conrad Gesner at Zurich 

 and Luc Ghini at Bologna, and acquired a taste for natural history. 

 During the reign of Edward VI. he was made physician to the pro- 

 tector Somerset, and he was afterwards made a prebendary of York, 

 dean of Wells, and a canon of Windsor. He was however again 

 obliged to fly to the Continent on the accession of Mary, where he 

 remained till the reign of Elizabeth, when he again returned, and was 

 presented with all his original benefices. 



Turner is said to have published several works on botany, but his 

 greatest work on this subject, and that on which his reputation rests, 

 is his ' Herball,' the first book of which was published in black letter, 

 small folio, with wood cuts, in London, in 1551. A second book was 

 published at Cologne in 1562, and the whole work was republished 

 at the same place in 1568. This work is arranged alphabetically, and 

 contains much laborious research and acute criticism with regard to 

 the plants then known. Although he appears to have collected plants 

 himself, he has described but few new ones in this work. The 

 medical properties of the plants are treated of, especially those 

 which were unknown to the ancients. Subjoined to this book is one 

 on baths, in which the author speaks of the properties of various 

 medicinal springs in England, Germany, and Italy. His other writings 

 connected with medicine were, a work on the wines used in England, 

 and another on the properties of treacle. In 1544 Dr. Turner pub- 

 lished at Cologne a small octavo volume on the birds mentioned by 

 Pliny and Aristotle, entitled ' Avium prsecipuarum, quarum apud 

 Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est, Historia.' In Gesner^s great work 

 the ' Historia Animalium,' there is an account of the British fishes by 



Dr. Turner. These works afford abundant evidence of his powers as 

 a sound critic and accurate observer in the science of zoology. 



Dr. Turner published several works on controversial divinity ; also 

 a collation of the translation of the Bible into English, with the 

 Hebrew, Greek, and Latin copies. He also translated several works 

 on science and divinity from the Latin into English. 



His fondness for plants led him to their cultivation, and he had 

 botauic gardens at Wells and Kew. He died July 7, 156S, leaving a 

 large family. Turner was one of the earliest pioneers of natural 

 science in Great Britain, and had it not been for the stormy period 

 in which he lived, and the shortness of his life, he evidently possessed 

 a genius that could have placed its possessor foremost in the ranks 

 of the cultivators of natural history. 



TURPIN or TILPIN, Latinised TURPI'NUS, was originally a 

 Benedictine monk of the convent of St. Denis near Paris ; but Charle- 

 magne raised him, in 773, to the archbishopric of Rheims. This 

 dignity he held until his death, in 811, or, according to others, 813. 

 There is a Latin romance in verse containing an account of the expedi- 

 tion of Charlemagne into Spain against the Saracens, of his conquest 

 of the country, and of the heroic death of Roland in the vale of Ron- 

 cesvalles. This poem, which is entitled 'Historia de Vita Caroli 

 Magni et Rolaudi,' was formerly ascribed to Archbishop Turpin, as is 

 stated on the title-page of several manuscripts. But among the many 

 arguments which have been advanced against that opinion, ona is 

 sufficient to show its inconsistency. The author of the romance 

 speaks of the death of Charlemagne, although it is an attested fact that 

 Archbishop Turpiu died before the emperor. The work was in all 

 probability composed about the end of the llth or the beginning of 

 the 12th century. Whether the name of the author was really Tur- 

 pin, and thus gave rise to the confusion, or whether it is a mere 

 forgery, for which the circumstances of those times, formerly offered 

 many temptations, cannot be decided. Thus much only seems clear, 

 that the writer's object was to exhibit Charlemagne as the model of a 

 hero in combating paganism and the pagans, and thereby to work 

 upon his contemporaries, so as to rouse them to take part in the 

 Crusades. The tendency of the poem is a religious one, and it bears 

 great marks of being the work of a learned monk, especially in the 

 subtle disputes between the heroes, who fight as much with their 

 tongues as with their swords. Notwithstanding all this, the work is 

 of great interest, being one of the earliest poetical productions of the 

 Middle Ages. It is printed in S. Schardius' and Reuber's collections 

 of ' Scriptores Rerum Gerroanicarum.' A separate edition was pub- 

 lished by Ciampi at Florence, 8vo, 1822, and another in 1823. 



(Vossius, De Historicis Lat., p. 298; Bayle, Dictionnaire Hist, et 

 Crit., under 'Turpin.') 



TURPIN DE CRISSE, LANCELOT, Comte de Cruse 1 , a writer on 

 tactics, of considerable celebrity, the materials for whose biography 

 are, when his reputation is taken into account, astonishingly meagre. 

 He was born in La Beauce, of a noble family, about the year 1715. 

 He entered the army young; obtained a company in 1734, and a 

 regiment of hussars in 1744. He distinguished himself iu his charge 

 of colonel in the wars of Italy and Germany, and was promoted to the 

 rank of brigadier;general. 



In the midst of a successful career (about 1753 ?) he astonished his 

 friends by renouncing the world, and commencing a noviciate in the 

 abbey of La Ti appe. His flight from the sanctuary of asceticism was 

 as abrupt as his entry into it. Soon after this unsuccessful attempt 

 to make himself a saint, he became a husband, taking in marriage a 

 daughter of the Marechal de Laveudhal, a lady of literary tastes, 

 called by her contemporaries ' the secretary of the Abbe" de Voisenon,' 

 who nominated her his literary executor, an office which, like some 

 literary executors of a later date, she discharged by publishing all the 

 rubbish of his study. 



In 1754 Turpin de Crisse" made his de"but as an author by publishing 

 in conjunction with Castilhon, the 'Amusernens Philosophiques et 

 Literaires de deux Amis.' The epistle dedicatory to J. J. Rousseau 

 was composed by our author. Rousseau remarked, for his encourage- 

 ment, that the work was not bad enough to entitle its author to 

 despair of attaining eminence, nor good enough to entitle him to dis- 

 pense with making a better. In the same year appeared a more 

 important work by Turpin de Crissd ' The Essay on the Art of War,' 

 upon which his reputation mainly rests. It was translated iutc 

 German by the express orders of Frederic the Great. Ligonier 

 accepted the dedication of the English translation by Captain Otway ; 

 the Essay was also translated into Russian ; and notwithstanding the 

 advance made in the theory and practice of war since the time of it 

 publication, it is still regarded as a work of authority. The work 

 divided into five books. In the first every possible operation of a 

 campaign (with the exception of sieges) is systematically explained ; 

 the second treats of the precautions to be observed in attacking tho 

 enemy in the field; the third, of cantonments; the fourth, of attack- 

 ing the enemy in quarters ; the fifth, of partisan warfare and the 

 management of light troops. 



In 1757 Turpin de Crissd was recalled to active service; in 1761 he 

 was created Mare'chal-de-camp ; in 1771 he was made a commander of 

 the Order of St. Louis ; in 1780 he was raised to the rank of lieu- 

 tenant-general, and obtained in the following year the appointment of 

 governor of Fort Scarpe at Douai. His name appears in the list of 



