That genealogical critic must indeed be fastidious, who would deny the Poet's right to assert that his mother was of _gentle blood_ and of an _ancient family_. The baptismal register of William Turner, by which his birth is placed only two or three years earlier than the date you have conjecturally assigned for that event, shows that he was in his sixty-ninth year when he died. His wife survived him nearly sixteen years. "Mrs. Turner, widow," was buried in the church of the Holy Trinity Goodramgate, on Sept. 11, 1681. Administration of the goods of "Thomasine Turner of York," who died intestate, was granted by the archbishop's court to her daughter Mary Turner, spinster, on Dec. 2, 1681. From the circumstance of Mary being the sole administratrix it may be inferred that the only surviving son, William Turner, was then absent from York, and that Mary was the oldest of the unmarried daughters who had remained at home.[45] But there is no reason to suppose that she had remained there alone. We may presume that Edith was one of her companions, and took part in administering to the comforts of their mother's last hours--in assisting to "rock the cradle of reposing age." Assuming it to have been soon after the Restoration that William Turner returned to York, his daughter Edith was then just entering into womanhood, so that for nearly twenty years of the bloom of her life she was domesticated with her family within the walls of our venerable city. Their residence stood under the very shadow of the towers of our cathedral, the parish of Saint John del Pike being usually regarded as forming part of the Minster-close. The neighbourhood in which they lived was crowded with the stately mansions of the dignitaries of the church, the higher officers of the ecclesiastical courts, and many of the wealthy families of the county. We cannot doubt that the Turners moved in the best society of which the city could at that period boast; not so brilliant and dignified as when it shone with the splendour of the vice-regal court of the Lords Presidents of the North; but still aristocratic, refined, and intellectual,--a society in which Edith Turner might receive that training which fitted her to hold converse in after-life with Bolingbroke, and Congreve, and Swift. When, upon the death of Mrs. Turner, the daughters who had remained under the maternal roof at York had to seek a home with their married sisters in other parts of the kingdom, it was Edith's lot to remove to London, where she became the wife of Alexander Pope, and the mother of the Poet, whose name you justly designate "one of the greatest among Englishmen." * * * * *