Oates. Oates, whom Turbervill now called 'an ill man,' explained the situation by some words that he had heard Turbervill let fall to the effect that 'the protestant citizens having deserted him, goddamn him he would not starve.' He was one of the eight witnesses against Shaftesbury at his trial on 24 Nov. 1681. A few days later he fell ill of smallpox, and died on 18 Dec., thus fulfilling Lord Stafford's prediction to Burnet. It has been stated that he died a papist, but this is confuted by the fact that he was ministered to on his deathbed by the rector of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and future Archbishop Thomas Tenison [q. v.] (see Throckmorton MSS., ap. Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. App. iv. 174). He made no confession of his perjuries.
[Nicholas's Glamorganshire, 1874, p. 64; Intrigues of the Popish Plot laid open, 1680; Burnet's Own Time, i. 488-509; Eachard's History, p. 1012; Howell's State Trials, vols. vii. and viii.; North's Examen, 1740, pt. ii. chap. iv.; Luttrell's Brief Hist. Relation, vol. i.; Hazlitt's Collections and Notes, 1876, p. 429; Irving's Jeffreys, 1898, pp. 135-9, 144; Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. vii. 176; Yalden's Narrative of a Gent, of Gray's Inn, 1680; and see arts. College, Stephen, and Dugdale, Stephen.]
TURBERVILLE or TURBERVILE, GEORGE (1540?–1610?), poet, born about 1540, was the second son of Nicholas Turbervile of Whitchurch, Dorset, by a daughter of the house of Morgan of Mapperton. To an elder brother, Troilus, who died in 1607, the parsonage of Shapwick in Dorset was let by the commissioners in April 1597, and again in April 1600 (Cal. State Papers, Dom.) He was descended from an ancient Dorset family [see Turberville, Henry de], and James Turbervile [q. v.], bishop of Exeter, was his great-uncle (see Hutchins, Dorset, i. 139).
Born at Whitchurch, says Wood, of a ‘right ancient and genteel family,’ the poet was admitted scholar of Winchester College in 1554 at the age of fourteen, became perpetual fellow of New College in 1561, left it before he was a graduate the year following, and went to one of the inns of court, where he was much admired for his excellencies in the art of poetry. Afterwards, being esteemed a person fit for business as having a good and ready command of his pen, he was entertained by Thos. Randolph, esq., to be his secretary, when he received commission from Queen Elizabeth to go ambassador to the Emperor of Russia.’ Thomas Randolph (1523–1590) [q. v.] set out on his special mission to Ivan the Terrible in June 1568, returning in the autumn of the following year; and it was apparently during this interval that Turbervile indited from Moscow his first volume, entitled ‘Poems describing the Places and Manners of the Country and People of Russia, Anno 1568.’ No copy of this work, as cited by Wood, appears to be known, but some of the contents were evidently included among his later verse (‘Tragical Tales’) under the heading ‘The Author being in Moscouia wrytes to certaine his frendes in Englande of the state of the place, not exactly but all aduentures and minding to have descrybed all the Moscouites maners brake off his purpose upon some occasion.’ There follow three extremely quaint epistles upon the manners of ‘a people passing rude, to vices vile enclinde,’ inscribed respectively to ‘Master Edward Dancie,’ ‘to Spencer,’ and ‘to Parker.’ The three metrical epistles were reprinted in Hakluyt's ‘Voyages,’ 1589. ‘After his return from Muscovy,’ says Wood, who remains our sole authority, ‘he was esteemed a most accomplished gentlemen, and his company was much sought after and desired by all men.’
Turberville had already appeared as an author with ‘Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs, and Sonets, with a Discourse of the Friendly Affections of Tymetes to Pyndara his ladie. Newly corrected with additions,’ 1567; imprinted by Henry Denham, b. 1. 8vo (Bodleian Library; no earlier edition seems known. The British Museum has only the impression of 1570; it was reprinted by Collier in 1867). The title recalls ‘the Songs and Sonnets’ of Tottel's miscellany, and the ‘Eglogs, Epitaphes, and Sonettes’ (1563) of Barnabe Googe, whom Turbervile had studied with care. A number of his own epigrams (e.g. ‘Stand with thy Snoute,’ on p. 83) were appropriated verbatim and without acknowledgment by Timothy Kendall in his ‘Flowers of Epigrammes,’ 1577. Turbervile has epitaphs upon Sir John Tregonwell, Sir Join Horsey, and Arthur Broke [q. v.]
Turbervile's next venture appears to have been a compilation entitled ‘The Booke of Faulconrie, or Hawking. For the onely delight and pleasure of all Nobleman and Gentlemen. Collected out of the best authors, as well Italian as Frenchmen, and some English practices withall concerning Faulconrie, the contents whereof are to be seene in the next page folowying. Imprinted by Christopher Barker at the signe of the Grashopper in Paules Churchyard,’ 1575, 4to, b. l., with woodcuts; dedicated to the Earl of Warwick. Another edition appeared in 1611, ‘newly revised, corrected, and augmented,’ with a large cut representing the Earl of Warwick in hawking costume
