Nothing can be more probable than that Robert of York, the father of Edward and the grandfather of Lancelot, sprang from this respectable if not opulent family of Turner of Towthorpe, and, according to a practice very common in those days, had been transplanted from the country to be brought up to a trade in the town. I have now to bring to your notice a remarkable circumstance which occurred in the earlier part of the life of Lancelot Turner. You need not be reminded of the bitter persecution of Nonconformists that prevailed in the northern counties whilst the Court of York was under the presidency of the Earl of Huntingdon; and the strict watchfulness which the civil authorities were specially required by the Government to exercise over all persons suspected of any attachment to Popery. At the commencement of the year 1594, the magistrates of York were called upon by the Lord President and Council of the North, acting in obedience to instructions received from the Privy Council, to make diligent inquiry as to the number of gentlemen resident within their jurisdiction who were sending, or had sent, their children abroad under colour of learning languages. In the answer which the Lord Mayor and Aldermen returned to the communication from the Lord President, they certified that Martin Turner, son of Edward Turner of York gentleman deceased, went over the seas about three years before--that he was then at Venice at the University, and learning of languages there--and that he was relieved and maintained by one Lancelot Turner of York gentleman, his brother.[29] The curious facts thus disclosed appear to me to admit of only one explanation. We discover that in the year 1591, about twelve months after the death of Mrs. Jane Turner, his father's widow, Lancelot Turner took the extraordinary step of sending his brother, a youth of nineteen, into Italy. We have seen the desire of the father, as shown by the testamentary provision he made for his son Martin, whom he probably designed for one of the liberal professions, that this his youngest boy should be brought up at the university. His solemn injunction to his widow, that she should be "a good mother to the boy and see all things ordered for his most benefit," was, no doubt, piously fulfilled. We cannot imagine, that when Edward Turner, an officer of the Council of the North, spoke of the university, he had the most remote idea of his son being brought up at a Popish college. Yet we find that Lancelot Turner, the moment he became the youth's natural guardian, sent him abroad, and placed him at the University of Venice, which was then notorious for being the very centre and hotbed of Jesuitism.[30] The conclusion seems inevitable, that Lancelot Turner was himself a Roman Catholic, and adopted the most effectual method of having his brother Martin educated and established in the same faith.