His Ancestors

The first known direct paternal ancestor in my branch of the paternal Turpin line is the Reverend Thomas Turpin, from Ireland. There is no apparent record of his parentage, so he will have to do. If we could trace back further, there is a Turpin line that goes back to Richard Turpin of Whitchester in the 13^th century. The Whitchester Turpins between the 13^th & 15^th centuries were generally murderers, thieves and rogues of one kind or another, but that is probably how you got land and became rich in those days.

One of the Whitchester Turpins, Nicholas, was the great great grandfather of Sir George Turpin, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth 1 and received a coat of arms described in Burke’s General Armoury as follows:

“Gu. on a bend ar. Three lions heads erased sable. Crest – a griffin, wings inverted or, guttee de sang, armed azure”

Nicholas’s son John married Elizabeth Kinnesman, who was the heiress to property in Knaptoft in Leicestershire. According to Burke’s Peerage, Sir George’s granddaughter, an Elizabeth Turpin, married someone called Sir Henry Beaumont, which is about as close as we ever got to royalty.

The Irish Turpins (of whom more below) used an unregistered coat of arms similar to that described above, which may suggest an ancestral connection between Rev Thomas Turpin and the Turpins of Whitchester and Knaptoft.

Anyway, let us start with Thomas. All we know about him is this account from Robert Brown:

The first traceable member of the family is the Rev. Thomas Turpin, who was b.c. 1580 and obtained his B.A. from St Alban's Hall, Oxford on 22 Oct. 1602: his ancestry is unknown and there is no information on his career until he is mentioned as Rector of Clonleigh, Co. Donegal in Bishop Downham's Visitation of 1622. This Visitation describes him as "an honest man and a good preacher and given to hospitality," and says he was resident in the town of Lifford, not having a house or glebe within the parish… Thomas Turpin also held the adjoining benefice of Donaghmore and the prebendary of Aghadoey, all in the Diocese of Derry. He died in 1627, leaving issue by his wife Margaret….

Well, not a bad start. “Given to hospitality” probably meant that he kept a couple of bottles of poitin stashed away for special occasions, which I can identify with as I normally have a few bottles of the South African equivalent, mampoer, salted away for exactly the same reason.

It is difficult to imagine what his life was like, 400 years ago. Donegal must have been a wild place then – even today it is relatively undeveloped and rural, if beautiful in its ruggedness. Donegal town, even now, is not a big place, so Clonleigh in the 1620s could not have amounted to much. I imagine it to have been peopled and farmed by good God-fearing Scottish Presbyterian settlers, with names like Murray, Hamilton and Beatty.

The Rev Thomas died aged 47, but not before having 6 children – 3 sons and 3 daughters.

St Alban’s Hall in Oxford no longer exists – at some point in I think the 19^th century it was merged into Merton College. If any records exist of Thomas at St Alban’s Hall, they may be in the Merton archives. It might also be worth searching through the records of the Church of Ireland in an attempt to identify his parentage.

His 3 sons were Thomas, William, Joseph. The names of his 3 daughters are not known. The names Thomas and William (and to a lesser extent Joseph) recur many times in subsequent generations of the Turpin family, as becomes apparent. The Turpin family also subsequently produced many other reverend gentlemen, and not a few businessmen, merchants and traders.