Neither have I succeeded in my attempts to ascertain at what time, or under what circumstances, William Turner disposed of the manor of Towthorpe. John George Smyth, Esq. of Heath, near Wakefield, M.P. for the city of York, is the present owner of the estate, which was purchased, in the early part of the last century, by one of his ancestors, from Sir Charles Dalston, Bart., to whom it had descended from his grandfather, Sir William Dalston, the first baronet of that name. The Dalstons were a Cumberland family, and Sir William had most probably acquired the Towthorpe estate by his marriage with Anne Bolles, the eldest daughter and coheir of that singular person, Lady Bolles of Heath Hall, the Baronetess, whose curious history is narrated in your interesting "Antiquarian Notices of Lupset, the Heath, and Sharlston." You state that William Turner was living in the parish of Saint John del Pike at the time of the Heralds' Visitation in 1665, and was one of the persons whom they summoned to appear.[42] The visits of the heralds at York took place in the months of August and September in that year; and perhaps you would not have imputed blame to him for having neglected that opportunity of recording his genealogy, had you been aware that he was then in his last illness, awaiting a more solemn summons. He died within a month after the date of his will, and was buried in the church of the Holy Trinity Goodramgate, on Oct. 3, 1665. Had the heralds made their visitation at York a few months sooner, we should doubtless have possessed their testimony, that the Turners were entitled to take rank among the gentry of York. But it will now, perhaps, be admitted that no such testimony is requisite. It has been shown by unimpeachable evidence that Edward Turner, the great-grandfather of Edith Pope, was the son of a substantial citizen of York, who flourished in the reign of King Henry VII.; that, having advanced a step higher in the social scale, he maintained during great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the rank of a gentleman, and associated upon a footing of equality with the best of the inhabitants of a city which was then "the glory of the North"; that, in addition to the property he inherited in the city, he acquired lands of considerable value in the county, and these he transmitted to his descendants; that his eldest son, Lancelot Turner, by means of his paternal fortune, was enabled, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, to purchase the manor and estate of Towthorpe, and thus attain the _status_ of a country gentleman; and in that position, dying childless, was succeeded by his nephew, William Turner, who "made choice of, to be the mother of his children,"[43] of whom Edith Pope was one, a lady who was not only herself of good family, but was (as you have remarked[44]) allied with several of the higher Yorkshire gentry.