TURNER, Thomas II (d.c.1586), of Bath, Som.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1563

Family and Education

Offices Held

Alderman, Bath, mayor 1575-6.

Biography

Nothing has been ascertained about Turner’s parentage or domestic life. By the early years of Elizabeth’s reign he was a citizen of Bath, sometimes employed to carry out ‘writing’ for the town. The chamberlains’ accounts contain a number of payments to him for this purpose. He may have been a grocer (on at least one occasion the town bought pepper from him), or a builder (he regularly asked for payment for the carriage of earth or other materials for work on new houses or on the baths). In June 1576 he received his mayoral salary of £40. By this time he held considerable property in Bath, and was paying rent to the corporation for houses in Vicars Lane and elsewhere. In 1578 his total bill for leases was £2 6s.8d.—an amount repeated in the following two years’ accounts under the heading ‘rents withholden’. Part of his debt was for fishing rights, and like other prominent citizens he had a private door into the King’s bath, one of the three large ones in the city: for this privilege he paid 5s. a year. By 1581 he had considerably increased his property, and owed the town, among other obligations, £5 ‘for the fine of his two houses’, and £10 for a ‘Bath chamber’.

He died either at the end of 1585, or early the next year, when ‘the house which was Mr. Turner’s’ was leased to another man.

Bath Chamberlains’ Accts. (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxviii), passim.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes