Researching Christopher Turnor

He was eldest son of Christopher and Ellen Turnor of Milton Ernest, Bedfordshire. He matriculated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1623. In later years he contributed towards the rebuilding of the college chapel, begun in 1668.

In November 1633 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. On 7 March 1639 he was appointed Receiver General of South Wales, jointly with William Watkins. He was elected a bencher in 1654.

During the English Civil War he supported the royalist side, and at the Restoration in July 1660 was made serjeant-at-law, third baron of the exchequer, and knighted. In October of that year he was placed on the commission for the trial of the regicides.

At the Gloucester autumn assizes in 1661 he displayed a degree of circumspection unusual in that age. One William Harrison was missing under suspicious circumstances, and John Perry swore that his mother Joan and his brother, Richard Perry, had murdered him. The grand jury found a true bill, but Turnor refused to try the case until Harrison's body should be produced. Sir Robert Hyde, before whom the same case came at the next Lent assizes, was less cautious. He allowed the case to proceed, the jury convicted the prisoners, and they were executed; but some years afterwards their innocence was established by Harrison's reappearance. Turnor surrendered the receivership of South Wales on 16 June 1662.

At York in the winter of 1663-4 he opened the commission under which several puritans implicated in the northern plot were sentenced to death. In the administration of the Conventicle and Five Mile acts he appears to have shown as much leniency towards the accused as the rigour of these statutes permitted. He was a member of the special court of summary jurisdiction created to adjudicate on disputes between owners and occupiers of property in the districts ravaged by the Great Fire of London.

In recognition of the services which in this capacity he rendered to the public, his portrait, painted for the corporation of London by Michael Wright in 1671, was placed in Guildhall. There is also an engraved portrait of him at Lincoln's Inn. Another portrait, by Sir Peter Lely, is at Stoke Rochford House. He died in May 1675, and was buried on the 19th in the church at Milton Ernest.

He married Joyce, sister of Sir Philip Warwick, and they had 2 children. Their son Edmund (d. 1679) was father of a son of the same name who died childless in 1764. Their daughter Joyce married James Master of Gray's Inn and East Langdon, Kent, on 18 December 1667; she was the maternal grandmother of Sir George Pocock and mother-in-law of George Byng, 1st Viscount Torrington. Turnor's wife Joyce died in 1707.

The estate of Milton Ernest was eventually sold to the judge's youngest brother, Sir Edmund Turnor (knighted 1663, died 1707) of Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire, ancestor of Edmund Turnor.

Turnor was educated at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester and at Christ Church, Oxford. He initially trained as an architect under Edwin Lutyens and Robert Weir Schultz. In addition to his architectural work, Turnor became a campaigner for agricultural reform. He co-founded the Central Landowners' Association.

In August 1907 he was married to Sally Carpenter, the only daughter of Admiral Walter Carpenter in Little Gaddesden Church, Herts. They had no issue.

Christopher Turnor was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a Deputy Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, a justice of the peace for parts of Kesteven and Lindsey in Lincolnshire, and High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1834. Turnor was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for South Lincolnshire in April 1841, and served until the 1847 general election. He was a member of the Carlton Club.

Christopher Turnor's great grandfather was Edmund Turnor (–1769), of Stoke Rochford in Kesteven, and Panton in East Lindsey, Lincolnshire. His father was Edmund Turnor (1755–1829), FRS, FSA, MP for Midhurst, antiquarian, and the author of Collections for the History of the Town and Soke of Grantham Containing Authentic Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton. Turnor married on 2 February 1837 Lady Caroline Finch-Hatton (6 July 1816 – 13 March 1888), daughter of George Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of Winchilsea (1791–1858). The Finch-Hatton family owned lands in Hertfordshire and parts of Hatton Garden in London. Turnor's son was Edmund Turnor (24 March 1838 – 15 December 1903), Member of Parliament for Grantham in 1868, and for South Lincolnshire from 1868 to 1880. A second son was Christopher Hatton Turnor (b. 16 Dec 1840), whose son was Christopher Hatton Turnor, author and architect, of Stoke Rochford (23 November 1873 – 1940), who married on 7 August 1907 Sarah Marie Talbot, daughter and heir of Admiral The Hon. Walter Cecil Carpenter, formerly Talbot.