Turnor, married Francis Gee, and left issue a daughter Sarah, who succeeded as sole heiress to the Turnor estates, which, by her marriage with Joseph Garth, passed on her death, 22 Sept. 1744, to her son, Edward Turnour Garth, who assumed the additional name of Turnour, and was created Baron Winterton of Gort, Galway, on 10 April 1761, and Viscount Turnour and Earl of Winterton on 12 Feb. 1766.
[Le Neve's Pedigrees of Knights (Harl. Soc.), p. 87; Addit. MS. 19103 f. 339; Morant's Essex, ii. 495–6, 513; Manning and Bray's Surrey, ii. 7; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, ‘Turnour, Earl Winterton;’ The Genealogist, ed. Selby, iii. 248; Dugdale's Orig. p. 222; Willis's Not. Parl. ii. 261, 274; Lists of Members of Parliament (official); Lords' Journ. xiv. 344; Commons' Journ. viii. 245, ix. 126, 245; Parl. Hist. iv. 200, 411; Cobbett's State Trials, v. 1075, 1103, vi. 226; Pepys's Diary, ed. Braybrooke; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss) iii. 1060; Bigland's Observations on Parochial Registers, p. 28; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1655–71 passim; Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. App. p. 79, 7th Rep. pp. 135, 152, 474, 12th Rep. App. vii. 48, 51, 68; Harvey's Account of the Great Fire in London in 1666; Price's Descr. Acc. of the Guildhall of the City of London, p. 79; Carlisle's Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, p. 194; Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, 1830; Turnor's Hertford, p. 124; Allen's Lincolnshire, v. 317; Horsfield's Sussex, ii. 183; Berry's County Genealogies (Sussex), p. 368; Foss's Lives of the Judges; Manning's Speakers of the House of Commons; Burke's Peerage, s.v. ‘Winterton.’]
TURNOUR, CYRIL (1575?-1626), dramatist. [See Tourneur.]
TURNOUR, GEORGE (1799–1843), orientalist, was the eldest son of George Turnour, third son of Edward Turnour Garth Turnour, first earl of Winterton [see under Turnor, Sir Edward]. His mother was Emilie, niece to the Cardinal Duc de Beaussett. He was born in 1799 in Ceylon, where his father was employed in the public service, but was educated in England. In 1818 he entered the Ceylon civil service, and devoted himself to the study not only of the vernaculars of the island, but also to the unexplored literature of Pali, the leading religious language of Ceylon and other Buddhist lands. In 1826, when residing at Ratnapura, near Adam's Peak, he obtained from his instructor in Pali a copy of the ‘Mahāvamsa,’ the most important authority on the ancient history of Ceylon. His first publication on this subject was in the ‘Ceylon Almanack’ in 1833. He had previously given a copy of his researches to Major Forbes, who republished them in his ‘Eleven Years in Ceylon’ (London, 1840), with confirmations of their accuracy. The great discovery of Turnour's life was the identification of King Piyadassi, the promulgator of the celebrated rock-edicts scattered over India, with Asóka, the grandson of Chandragupta, the Sandrakottus of Greek history. This turning-point of Indian historical research was communicated to James Prinsep and published by him, with a supplementary paper by Turnour himself, in the ‘Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society’ for 1837. In literature Turnour's magnum opus was his edition of the ‘Mahāvamsa’ (vol. i.), published in 1836, with an English translation and a masterly historical introduction. This was the first Pali text of any extent that had at that time been printed. His literary work was carried on without detriment to public duty, and in the latter part of his career he was a member of the supreme council of Ceylon. His health becoming impaired in 1841, he returned to Europe, and died at Naples on 10 April 1843.
[Tennant's Ceylon, 3rd ed. i. 312 (from orig. documents); obituary in Journal of Royal As. Soc. vol. viii. (old ser.), Report for 1844; Journal of As. Soc. Bengal, vols. v–vii. and Centenary Volume.]
TUROLD (fl. 1075–1100), romance-writer, has been considered by some as the author of the ‘Chanson de Roland,’ whose composition is assigned by the best authorities to the end of the eleventh century. Its attribution to a person of that name, a common enough one in the eleventh century, rests on the last line of the poem in the oldest known manuscript of it in the Bodleian library at Oxford, ‘Ci falt la Geste que Turoldus declinet’ (i.e. thus ends the Geste which Turold completes). The ‘Geste’ is referred to four times in the poem as a sort of historical document, so if Turold was the author of anything, it was of this previous compilation. But ‘declinet’ may have two meanings, a primary one of ‘finish’ and a secondary one of ‘relate.’ The first is the one most generally adopted. So that Turold may be the name of either the scribe who wrote that particular manuscript, the author of the ‘Geste,’ or the jongleur who sang it. The balance of opinion now inclines to the first supposition. The Oxford manuscript was probably written towards the end of the twelfth century. In any case the identification of Turold with a Turold Benedictine of Fécamp, to whom William I gave the abbacy of Malmesbury, who removed to Peterborough in 1069 and died in 1098, resting as it does on the bare fact of the
