Peter Turner

a younger son of Dr. Peter Turner a Physitian, mention’d among the Incorporations in the Fasti, an. 1599, was born, as it seems, in the parish of S. Helen within Bishopsgate in the City of London, in which parish his father lived and practised his Faculty, admitted Probation. Fellow of Mert. Coll. in 1607, proceeded in Arts, and being not bound to any particular Faculty, as the Fellows in other Colleges are, became most admirably well vers’d in all kind of Learning. He was a most exact Latinist and Greecian, was well skill’d in the Hebrew and Arabick, was a thorough-pac’d Mathematician, was excellently well read in the Fathers and Councils, a most curious Critick, a Politician, Statesman, and what not. The first preferment that he had, whereby his parts were made manifest to the world, was the Professorship of Geometry in Gresham College, which he kept with his Fellowship, as afterwards he did the Savilian Professorship of Geometry in this University, obtained on the death of Hen. Briggs, in the year 1630. He was much beloved of Archb. Laud, and so highly valued by him, that he would have procured him to be one of the Secretaries of State, or Clerks of the Privy Council, &c. but being wedded to his College and a studious life (entertaining hopes withal of being Warden thereof) he denied those, and other honorable and beneficial, places. In 1636 he was actually created Doctor of Physick, and in the beginning of the grand Rebellion, was one of the first Scholars that went out and served his Majesty in the quality of a Volunteer ((a))((a)) Vide Hist. & Antiq. Ʋniv. Oxon. lib. 1. p. 355. under the command of Colonel Sir John Byron; for which, he did not only for the present suffer, as being a Prisoner of War, but was afterwards ejected by the Parliamentarian Visitors from all right he had to his Fellowship of Mert. Coll, and from his Professorship of the University. He wrot many admirable things, but he being too curious and critical, he could never finish them according to his mind, and therefore cancell’d them. He also made divers Translations from Greek into Lat. particularly some of the Epistles, from an old authentick MS, of Isidorus Pelusiota: Which Trans. were found among Hen. Jacobs Papers after his death. But that, with other Curiosities of our learned Turner, went afterwards into obscure hands. He hath extant in several books,

Epistolae variae ad doctissimos viros. He had also a principal hand in framing ((b))((b)) Vide ibid. p. 338.339. the University Statutes now in use, and was the sole person that made them run in good Latine, and put the Preface to them. He made the Caroline Cycle for the Election of Proctors, beginning in 1629 and ending in 1720, and did many other matters for the benefit of Learning and this University. At length being in a manner undone by the Severities of the Parliamentarian Visitors in 1648, he retired to the House of his Sister, the afflicted widdow of one Wats a Brewer living against the Compter Prison in Southwark near London, where spending the short remainder of his life in obscurity, surrendred up his soul to God in the month of January, in sixteen hundred fifty and one,1651/2. and in that of his age 66 or thereabouts; whereupon his body was buried in the Church of S. Saviour there. This person having been of a proud and haughty mind, because of his great parts, and intimate acquaintance with Archb. Laud and the great Heroes of that time, the snivling Presbyterians therefore, especially those of his College which he left behind him, as Alex. Fisher, Ralph Button, &c. did not stick to report that he died no better than a Brewers Clerk, because he often inspected the Accompts of his Sister before mention’d, and had a great care of her concerns.