Sir Edward Turner 1st Baronet 1691-1735

 

Sir Edward Turner, 1st Bt. Of Ambrosden 1691-1735

                                                   Sir Edward Turner, 1st Bt,1691-1735

Edward Turner, was born in 1691, the second son of John and Elizabeth Turner of Sunbury London. He grew up during a period of considerable expansion of British trade and a time when huge profits were to be made from the British East India Company Burke notes that he was a member of Lincoln’s Inn, one of the four professional societies for barristers, though in his time a gentleman’s education often incorporated a period studying the rudiments of law at one of the Inns without pursuing it as a career.

Mary Turner  nee Page c.1697 – 1744

In 1718 he married Mary, the eldest daughter of Sir Gregory Page, 1‘ Bt. Of East Greenwich, and it was probably his father-in-law’s influence as well as that of his brother, John, who was a director of the South Sea Company, that persuaded Edward to purchase shares in that company. ‘ The South Sea Company, chartered in 1711 by Robert Harley (later to become Chancellor of the Exchequer) enjoyed monopoly rights for conducting British trade in S. America, the British colonies of N. America and all Spanish colonies and in some years were paying nearly 100% dividends. In 1713 the Company had also won the Asiento contract to supply slaves to Spanish colonies. Like the E. India Company, several of its directors were political nominees who realized that such a highly profitable long-term enterprise could act as an abundant and relatively stable source of funds for Government expenditure. Accordingly, holders of Government securities, for instance, were required to exchange them for shares at par in the new company. In 1720 the Company offered and the Government accepted to take over more of the National Debt in its stocks which led to an astonishing increase in the price of the Company’s shares from £128 .10s in January to nearly £1000 in August (known as the South Sea Bubble).

Sir Edward Turner  1st Bt

Edward Turner and Gregory Page held substantial holdings of shares in the Company and sold them just before the crash (September 1720) making enormous gains, which they subsequently invested in purchasing land and country manors. Turner was appointed alongside his father-in-law as a director of the East India Company and rose to the position of Company chairman, one of great influence akin to an independent Bank of England governor today, The E.India Co. had founded Calcutta in 1690 and was by this time conducting a flourishing triangular trade with India and China. Both men then invested their increased wealth in land. Turner bought two manors in Oxfordshire from Sir Stephen Glynne, 3rd Baronet: one of the manors of Bicester in 1728  and then the manor of Ambrosden in 1729. Edward moved into this house, but his son, Sir Edward Turner (1719-66), Second Baronet, and father of John Turner (Dryden), built a larger house and laid out Ambrosden Park after his inheritance in 1735.

He served a year as the High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1732 and was created a baronet in August 1733. His elder brother, John of Sunbury-on-Thames, who had been a director of the South Sea Company presumably survived the collapse of the ‘Bubble’ and/or was responsible for the Company’s recovery, as he left Sir Edward’s son, estates valued at £100 000 at his death in 1760. Regrettably, Sir Edward did not live long enough to have much impact on Ambrosden though he was obviously regarded as a man of very high repute as Dunkin indicates at his ‘lying in state’ and funeral:

Sir Edward Turner, 1" Bt. Ambrosden died in 1735 in his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, London and his body was brought to Ambrosden and was laid in state at Ambrosden House for several days in one of the principal apartments, which was hung with black cloth on the occasion, and lighted with large wax candles. Pendant escutcheons emblazoned with his paternal bearings and family alliances decorated the room and loudly proclaimed the vanity of worldly honours and the brevity of human existence. The solemnity of the occasion was further increased by mutes stationed at each corner, arrayed in the habiliments of woe. To this spectacle, the whole neighbourhood was tacitly invited and the same pomp attended the funeral of the deceased.” He was buried in a vault in the chancel of Bicester Church.

The Page family also owed their fortune to trade and were described as living with ‘great splendour and hospitality’ and acquiring significant estates in Bedford and Kent. The marriage between Sir Edward and Mary turned out to be a fortuitous one for the family later in the eighteenth century when John’s (Dryden) elder brother, Gregory, inherited the Page Kent estates, adding Page to his name to become Sir Gregory Page-Turner.

The Second Baronet also inherited other landed estates from his uncle, John Turner, of Sunbury, Middlesex, and further fortunes from another uncle, Edward Turner. By the time of John Turner's (Dryden’s) birth in 1752, the Turners were in possession of substantial estates and a significant fortune.