Like other English religious communities, the English Benedictine monks have their own heroes of the Revolution. It seems that at one stage during its course, most of the monks living as conventuals within the monasteries were imprisoned, some dying under arrest. Heroes we might perhaps single out for particular mention include Prior Richard Marsh (1762-1843) of St Laurence's, Dieulouard, in Lorraine, who swam across the Moselle on the first stage of his flight to England, Prior Henry Parker (1752-1817) of St Edmund's, Paris, who whilst a prisoner, watched his community melt away and then spent the rest of his life fighting to regain the confiscated property of British religious communities in France, and finally, Prior Jerome Sharrock (1750-1808) of St Gregory's, Douai, who kept up the morale of his community in the darkest days of the Revolution by constantly urging his brethren to remain loyal to the English Benedictine President and Congregation.
The detailed stories of the monks' hardships, persecution and eventual flight to England have often been told, couched in justifiably heroic terms by their admiring successors who owed so much to these resolute forbears. The intention of this chapter, however, is to throw light on a less heroic strand amongst the English monks by examining the career of Dom John Turner (1765-1844), a monk of St Edmund's, Paris. Clerical collaboration with the Revolution is a theme developed by Michel Vovelle in his recent book, The Revolution against the Church (Cambridge 1991) where he asks (p.2),
The close, but often troubled relationship, which Benedictine monasteries have enjoyed with the civil power throughout the history of monasticism has helped to create at various times a form of Benedictine Erastianism. It is not too surprising, therefore, sometimes to witness a surrender to Caesar rather than a preference for Christ. At the dissolution of the monasteries in 16th-century England, one is struck by the lack of opposition in many, possibly the majority, of the monasteries to the unprecedented interference of the state. Similarly, during the French Revolution, although there were to be three French Benedictines who were to be martyred and beatified like the three English abbots of Glastonbury, Colchester and Reading earlier, for their opposition to the civil power's attack on the Church, many monks, at least initially, accepted the principles and policies of the French Revolution in regard to the Church[1].
It has to be admitted at the outset that one is not, however, likely to find the English monks as supportive of the revolution as some of their French brethren, for they ultimately viewed themselves as foreigners, despite the privileges of naturalisation accorded them. After attempts at compromise and co-operation during 1789 had failed, the English Benedictine President, Augustine Walker, and his advisers became less and less certain of a secure and satisfactory home in France where the Gallican Church seemed to be in the process of being systematically dismantled, and began to look elsewhere for a safe haven. Dismay at the destructive course of events was heightened among monks on the mission as well as in the houses by the uncompromising prophecies of Bishop Charles Walmesley who was probably, after the President, the monk with most influence in the Congregation until his death in 1797. His Signor Pastorini's General History of the Christian Church (First edition 1771), a commentary on the Apocalypse, suddenly became fashionable in the 1790's among English and Irish Catholic readers and in legitimist continental circles. Walmesley fully approved of himself being caricatured as a prophet of doom. His jeremiads complement the Abb6Barruers attacks on the revolution as a diabolical conspiracy in his Histoire du Clerge pendant la Revolution Francaise, London 1794[2].
This inevitable and deep-seated hostility to the Revolution as an abomination throws into relief any traces of acceptance by English Catholics of the course of events in France. However, in France, the English monks seem to have followed inescapably the same drift as the Gallican Church, finding themselves tied in that knot of overlapping political and ecclesiastical attitudes which characterised the ancien regime, Political and cultic considerations in France could not easily be treated separately. Thus, English monastic superiors joined with the Gallican clergy in accepting the early demands of the Revolution without demur. They could not have done otherwise. We find therefore all the houses on French soil during the latter part of 1789 rigidly adhering to edicts demanding registration of property for purposes of pensions and ordering restrictions on professions.
It is important to understand the background to such apparently easy compliance. The purging of anachronisms in the English Benedictine Constitutions of 1784 by order of the Commission des Reguliers (1760-80) had prepared the monks for more 'enlightened' reforms. The new Constitutions not only insisted on the teaching of the Gallican Articles but also engendered in the Congregation a mood of self-criticism still present when the revolution erupted. It was in this heady atmosphere of intellectual ferment and revolutionary ideas that the young generation of monks in the 1770's and 1780's received their training, and it is not surprising that some of them were to remain attached for the rest of their lives, despite the knocks of callous fortune, to the enlightened ideals which found maturity in the Revolution. Two close friends, Bede Brewer (professed 1758) and Cuthbert Wilks (professed 1764), for instance, were adamant in their support for the liberal English Catholic Cisalpines of the 1790s in their attempts to encourage the English government to remove disabilities from Catholics and to establish political and religious freedom. Both monks were products of the Sorbonne's liberal theological schools. Brewer was to become an expert in the study of the relationship between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, itself a vexed question throughout the Revolution. Wilks, known as 'No.45' because of his radical political and religious opinions, was a well-known democrat. He survived until 1829, weak in mind and obsessed with scrawling the words: Salus populi, suprema lex on any scrap of paper at hand[3], John Turner, who shall be discussed later, was one of the next generation who inherited something of the Benedictine liberal tradition.
The influence of some of the monks' liberal feelings in politics and religion is likely to have rubbed off on certain of their pupils who in later years were to take up the banner of religious and political liberty in England. It is remarkable how many of the English Cisalpines and their allies were educated in the Benedictine schools. There were, it seems, many more Cisalpine laity educated by the monks than were taught by the secular clergy or ex-Jesuits. John Courtenay Throckmorton, the leader of the Catholic Committee and a patron of Cuthbert Wilks, was at St Gregory's school in Douai in the mid-1760s. The traveller and Cisalpine, Henry Swinburne, was a pupil at the monks' school at la Celle between 1755 and 1759, and another traveller and Cisalpine, John Chetwode Bustace, was at St Gregory's, Douai, as a boy and later as a novice until he left in 1782. A friend of Edmund Burke, Bustace was a Whig whose liberalism incensed Bishop Milner. Another strong Whig was Sir John Edward Swinburne of Capheaton, who was tutored by the monks in Paris 1779-80. On becoming the sixth baronet in 1787, he expelled his Benedictine chaplain and apostatised in order to enjoy a sucessful career in politics, horse racing and art collecting. He ended up the Grand Master of his masonic lodge. A close friend of the Swinburnes who had also enjoyed a Benedictine education was Sir Thomas Gascoigne of Partington, in the East Riding, who was at St Gregory's, Douai in the early 1760s. His career parallels that of Sir John Swinburne: he was a devotee of the turf and between 1771 and 1772, he was Grand Master of the York Grand Lodge. In 1780, he too apostatised and became a Foxite MP. In 1783, Gascoigne built a memorial to his democratic principles, the solitary triumphal arch which still exists in Partington Park and which is inscribed with the boast: 'Liberty in America Triumphant 1783'[4].
In his background, John Turner was a typical monk of the late eighteenth century. He had been born in Woolston, near Warrington., a mission which had had the same Benedictine monk as missioner for thirty years. His mother's family were natives of the place and his father, a farmer. The mission was well endowed, and the missioner, Benedict Shuttleworth, had his own private income. It is therefore likely that Turner's early education (1774-76) at Sedgley Park school was subsidised. Turner had then moved to St Laurence's, Dieulouard, whose school from 1779 educated aspirants for the monastic life. In 1784, he was clothed with two others at St Gregory's, Douai which housed the common novitiate. He was professed at Douai for St Edmund's, Paris, in September 1786, having reached the age of twenty one years as stipulated by the 1784 Constitutions[5].
In the last years before the storm of revolution broke, Turner's monastic life followed the customary pattern of the ancien regime. The prior of St Edmund's, Dom Gregory Cowley, was particularly concerned for the younger members of the community, fearing that some of the seniors, familiar with Parisian ways, might scandalise them by their laxity. He took the young John Turner under his wing, inviting him in September 1787 to accompany him on a visit to La Celle, the small dependent priory to the east of Paris. Although Cowley was already aware of a deepening political crisis at Versailles, he seems to have had no premonition that there was developing a massive assault on the Church in France. Every stone of the ecclesiastical edifice remained in place when in February 1789, Cowley allowed the newly-tonsured Turner to visit his new titular benefice in the diocese of Angers and take possession of it. St Edmund's was heavily dependent for its survival on the income accruing from the fourteen benefices at its disposal. Four months later, Turner progessed smoothly to the subdiaconate. Ordination to the priesthood followed in 1790[6].
Initially, Prior Cowley had been impressed by Turner's good character, but the young priest soon fell prey to the strains and tensions which were deeply ingrained within the community by 1789, traditionally taken as the year the Revolution broke out. The resident community numbered ten at this time. Numbers had been declining for some years, and after a succession of weak superiors, the younger brethren had developed a reputation for neglecting their monastic duties and sloping off to socialise with some of the more disreputable elements within Paris. Turner is not mentioned by name as treading this path, but he cannot have been unaffected by the turbulent state of the house. Cowley had resigned with some relief as prior in the summer of 1789 and despite much encouragement, his favoured successor, Maurus Shaw, refused the poisoned chalice. Only after expressing grave misgivings did a second-choice candidate, Dom Henry Parker, accept the office of prior in September 1789. Subsequently, Parker's and Turner's destinies were to be intertwined[7].
A number of the St Edmund's community had visited the site of the Bastille soon after its demolition in July 1789 and had later sung a dirge in their chapel for the victims of the siege. The next month, the National Assembly's resolution to abolish tithe, which provided the bulk of the income derived from benefices, caused the first wave of real anxiety in the priory. From then on, edicts dismantling the old Church order came fast and ftirious. Swept up in this whirlwind of change, the English monks offered no resistance. In September, a group of them, presumably including Turner, had officiated at the ceremony in the adjoining church of the Val-de-Grace at which the colours of the new National Guard were blessed. As public opinion in Paris hardened against the religious orders, the community positioned from October a guard outside their front door. In the next month, the passing of the decree placing all ecclesiastical property at the disposal of the nation was interpreted as a serious blow, even though it was too early for its implications to be fully understood[8].
It was during 1790 that the dissolution of the religious life became inevitable when in February the decree was passed withdrawing the state's recognition of religious vows and forbidding the taking of them in future. Those religious, and they included a number from St Edmund's, who wished to forsake the cloister for the world were encouraged to do so by the promise of substantial pensions. By the summer, Prior Parker wrote despairingly of the community that 'all heads are turned and very little form remains of conventual life' He knew that the security promised by pensions would enable some to absent themselves from conventual duties and live as seculars in civilian dress within the monastery building, treating it as 'a lodging gratis'. St Edmund's would certainly have disappeared like many French houses at this time had not a decree of October 1790 prevented the confiscation of the building on the grounds that it was a foreign establishment. The community's English origin, furthermore, protected it from being subject to the terms of the notorious Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed initially in November 1790. There was, nevertheless, a suspicion that St Edmund's might eventually be forced to hold public elections to choose its superiors in accord with new constitutional directives[9].
There is no clear evidence of how all this confusion affected John Turner, though he certainly experienced it. He was among those 'young people at Paris' who in August 1791 were petitioning 'for a new election of prior according to the Constitution in France', but who had to make do with Prior Parker's re-election. There was little sign of Turner in the monastery when Gregory Cowley stayed the night there in June 1791. By October 1791, when the monastery chapel was forced to close as a public place of worship, Turner no longer saw himself as a conventual within the rump of the community left. Like other younger monks, he had begun to treat the monastery merely as a convenient lodging house[10]. The degree of his detachment from the common life is clear when the evidence for 1792 is examined. In May 1792, the President was advised by a confrere of Turner that he 'might do well on the Mission' for his 'notorious principles and behaviour' were well-known; even if 'his discourse may sometimes be somewhat exceptionable, he seems to possess a good share of Piety' The suggestion here is that he was probably more suited to the independent life of a missioner than to St Edmund's where his extreme and blunt opinions disturbed others[11].
Turner's infamous embracing of the Revolution occured in August 1792, when he took the Oath of Liberty and Equality and went on to join the National Guard. The Oath of Liberty and Equality, drawn up on 18th August 1792, was to be imposed on all those who were in receipt of a state pension, and Turner was then drawing a state pension of 900 livres. As the monastic life was no longer officially recognised, he described himself as a 'man of letters' which indeed he was. However, there is no evidence to show that Turner ever took the notorious Oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy; he was, after all, in the government's eyes still a foreigner. Nevertheless, the revolutionary authorities deemed him an enthusiastic ally and were determined to take advantage of his co-operation by broadcasting his civic virtue. After he had obtained the requisite certificate of civisme from his local revolutionary Section's comite de surveillance the Section enthusiastically extolled Turner's patriotism. In the committee's eyes, he had been 'constamment attach6 aux principles de la Revolution'From now on, Turner became an 'active' citizen of his Section, whose headquarters, in the old church of the Feuillantines, conveniently lay at the bottom of St Edmund's garden. A later historian pictured Turner brandishing a pike and taking his turn mounting guard at the barricades[12].
Before one is swept away by flights of fancy in following the career of this English Benedictine who devoted himself wholeheartedly to the revolutionary cause, it is as well to remember that, according to some historians, little practical meaning was invested in the Civic Oath by those taking it. Thus, John McManners believes that this Oath was seen primarily as 'a proclamation of ideological self-identification to... the lightness of a Rousseaustic General Will'. This would partly explain why so many of the clergy promptly took the Oath, without waiting for papal guidance, and thus safeguarded their pensions. Such a degree of clerical collaboration helps us to understand Turner's own attitude. At least one other monk of St Edmund's took the Civic Oath of Liberty and Equality along with Turner in 1792. After refusing the office of prior of St Edmund'sin 1789, M aurus Shaw had remained as superior of La Celle where his swearing the Oath before the authorities allowed him to conduct funerals and other services in the parish church. Furthermore, it was not unusual for religious to leave the cloister and become National Guardsmen, an elite force, after all, of bon bourgeois when this body was first formed in 1789[13].
France's declaration of war on Britain in February 1793 irretrievably altered the revolutionary government's attitude to British religious in France. All such religious, including the English Benedictines, were immediately suspected of being agents of an enemy power, and their patriotism, despite any oaths taken, called into question. A decree of 10th October confiscated British property and demanded the confinement of all British subjects until the conclusion of the war. St Edmund's was seized, and the handful of resident community left, who were still under Prior Parker, were imprisoned within their own monastery for over a year. Turner was not, however, one of these. His room was still in the monastery, now converted into a prison, and it was locked so that his personal effects were secure. This evidence strengthens the suggestion already made that he had distanced himself from the community and that he was only using the monastery at this time as a convenient lodging house. Nevertheless, the bursar, Dom Augustine Keller, continued to regard him as a resident and paid his taxes[14].
On October 13 1793, Turner was imprisoned in the ex-convent of Sainte-Pelagie, once a hospice for prostitutes, near the Jardin des Plantes. Here he remained till his release fourteen months later, sharing his confinement with some famous prisoners of the Revolution. In a letter to his brother in 1801, he looked back to his time of confinement with a degree of self-pity:
These are not words showing much affection for the Revolution. Although his brethren enjoyed a measure of freedom during their imprisonment at St Edmund's, Turner's circumstances seem to have been harsher. He, therefore, appealed to the Committee of General Security demanding more favourable treatment on account of his earlier co-operation with the Revolution. He had, he alleged, been living in Paris for eleven years and supported the justness of France's war with England. After this ingratiating overture, he came, at last, to the point: might he be given leave to return to St Edmund's where he had a room in which his property was stored? He was probably here demanding the end of his imprisonment, rather than merely asking to transfer prisons. He followed up his plea with the recommendation of a personal friend, named Beaulieu, known to the Committee, who put in a kind word for him. It was all in vain, for he remained in Sainte-P61agie until his release on 10 December 1794[15].
All five of the imprisoned St Edmund's community, including T\irner, were released at the same time in December 1794, and lived in Paris 'scattered up and down' for a short while before they were able to return to their monastery in January 1795. A new sense of unity seems to have developed among them as a result of their adversity, and together the survivors set about rebuilding the ruins of their life. The monastery they found 'almost gutted* except for the library and four monastic cells, including Turner's, which were intact thanks to the seals placed on them at the beginning of the Revolution. Once Turner had settled back into his old quarters and established cordial relations with his brethren, he began collecting large numbers of revolutionary printed pamphlets and tracts and having them bound in volumes. This enterprise was carried out at the same time as he and others in the community were also attempting to recover valuable books which had disappeared from the library[16].
Turner seems to have been a bibliophile before 1789, but it was the Revolution which made possible the circumstances which allowed him to indulge his bookish interests to the full. There are a number of entries in his characteristic looped hand in the catalogue of St Edmund's library, and valuable books of his, besides the pamphlet collection, were to be transferred to the community of St Edmund's new home at Douai in northern France in the early nineteenth century[17]. France in the late 1790s must have been like England in the 1540s, with the remains of large and important monastic libraries and archives, dispersed at the Revolution, finding their way to market stalls and being sold for a song, or else used for packaging or cartridges.
During the Directory, a similar plight would befall many hundreds of the polemical tracts and government decrees generated by the Revolution. Turner greedily gathered the works of the immediate past as well as those of the ancien regime, storing them securely in his monastic cell. He gives no clear reason why he primarily concentrated on his Revolutionary collection, but he had a strong sense that he was living in momentous times, that history was being made before his eyes, and that posterity would thank him for his labour of gathering up all these scattered fragments. It seems unlikely that the compilation of this huge scrap-book collection was primarily the result of being fired by enthusiasm for the ideals of the Revolution.
Turner described his 'pretty numerous Collection de Pieces de different genre relative a la Revolution comprising nearly 500 volumes, partly bound in different coloured marbled paper and partly enclosed in loose cartons made for the purpose, and placed in a large book case or shelves'. It has remained essentially in this state until today. Chronologically, the Collection begins with a surprise item, John Milton's tract Of Education to Mr Samuel Hartlib, Written about the Year 1650. This was slipped into the Collection to serve as a useful comparison with Revolutionary pamphlets on national education and schools. The material relating specifically to the history of the Revolution comprises 275 volumes which contain an estimated 2500 separate pamphlets. These, together with extraneous material, newspaper cuttings, extracts and some manuscript notes and transcripts amount to some 8000 items in all, and mostly cover the period 1787 until 1806. Turner's own classification, chronological or thematic, is still preserved.
The Collection mostly relates to the politics of the Revolutionary era since political pamphlets were doubtless the easiest to obtain; SiSyes, for instance, is well represented and there are a great many reports of the siances of the Assemblies. Not surprisingly, there is a bias towards French ecclesiastical affairs, which is seen in the presence of comprehensive records of the debates on the Gallican Church, the Comite* Ecclesiastique, and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, but also in the texts of the letters to the Assembly from the various religious orders and in the texts of speeches by the Abbds Gr6goire, Maury, Raynal and Dom Gerle. The debate on the Church in 1791 is particularly well covered. St Cyprian's teaching on the unity of the Church and the danger of schi sm is applied to Revolutionary France in another pamphlet. Turner's own interest in literature is perhaps reflected in the inclusion of some scores of contemporary songs and satires as well as in items of Revolutionary drama and comedy. Unfortunately for a biographer of Turner, the Collection lacks any autobiographical material, although there is a wealth of manuscript annotations since Turner went to great pains to complete in his own hand any gaps in the text. There are copies of Burke's Reflections, and Priestley's replies to him, but little else to show the collection had been formed by an Englishman; reports of debates at Westminster, for instance, and a letter of December 1791 on the United Irishmen are in French. Turner did seem to be interested, however, in a comparison between the English Reformation and the French Revolution's attitude to the Church; essays on the suppression of the English monasteries, translated into French, are included. There is nothing specifically to betray the compiler's Benedictine background, although there is a 1789 report of the Third Estate's deliberations from the district of St. Etienne du Mont, an area of Paris close to the priory of St Edmund, where all but one of the parochial clergy had taken the constitutional oath.
Turner drew up a manuscript catalogue which is extant and is arranged in three parts. Catalogue A: 'Ourages Politiques' is arranged chronologically and seems to contain later additions in Prior Henry Parker's hand. It begins with works relating to various political constitutions before tracing in chronological sequence the political history of the French Revolution from 1782 until July 1806. Material becomes densest nearer this latter date and in the sections entitled Mdmoires et Piices particuliires. A whole section is devoted to General Dumouriez, and the Vendean revolt is allowed two sections, with material dated as late as August 1802. This catalogue is more of a scramble towards the end in that the material is listed by year rather than being grouped, as earlier, under a title. Catalogue B is also entitled 'Ouvrages Politiques' and duplicates some of the headings listed in 'Catalogue A', but it gives more emphasis to such topics as Joseph Lebon, the constitutional priest turned terrorist, and the 'Celebration du Decadi' and other Republican institutions. Catalogue B concentrates more on social history, with works in chronological order devoted to public education, the theatre, clubs and popular societies, Jews and Protestants, songs and satires, adoption and divorce, and the affairs of foreign countries. Catalogue C deals with ecclesiastical affairs, works relating to which are also found in the earlier two catalogues, but this catalogue was probably left unfinished. Here is included details of the extent of the Revolution's manifold impact on the Church and of the religious policies of foreign powers between 1799 and 1806. Besides Turner's original catalogue, the Collection has a modern chronological index completed by Mr Oliver J. G. Welch in 1972. As has been mentioned above, the Revolution generated much apocalyptic and millenarian literature, and Turner's volume 189, labelled 'Cranky' by Oliver Welch, is such a selection, containing prophecies, then fashionable, predicting war and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, persecution of the Church and the rise of Bonaparte, and Pius VI as the last pope. This volume concludes with the prophecies of the future saint, Benedict Joseph Labre, who had died in 1783, and which were recorded in Marconi's biography of Labre. There are six loose documents which were added to the Collection, probably hy Prior Henry Parker, after Turner had left for England in 1814. They include the text of the 1817 Concordat[18].
Turner's movements from 1795 until his return to England are not fully known. There were effectively only three members of the community left by this date, but they remained close to each other. Thus, Turner helped Prior Henry Parker and the bursar, Augustine Kellet, to repurchase the property in 1799 from the State which had confiscated it in that year but had then itself failed to find a buyer. However, he does not seem to have returned to live in the monastery with Parker and Kellet. He speaks of himself being left from the middle of 1798 to his own devices and admits to making a decent livelihood and acculumating sufficient funds to maintain himself. Meanwhile, Parker and Kellet continued to live in the priory until they moved during 1803 into other lodgings and let St Edmund's to tenants, following a decree which united all the British religious establishments in France under one administration supervised by Parker who acted as director.
From about 1800, we find Turner living in an apartment at 30 Rue des Fosses Saint Victor, at the top of the street, a property probably belonging to the English Canonesses of St Augustine whose convent lay in the same street. From 1796 he had been teaching English in a 'public college' and giving private lessons. Turner's decision to teach was not an unusual step for a religious in his position to take: teaching was a common alternative occupation at the turn of the century for many priests whose life had been disrupted by the Revolution. His experience of teaching would have encouraged Turner to write his Nouvelle GrammaireAnglaise, which was published in 1809, and was designed for his students. His teaching career also attracted him to the student text-books of the French-Irish writer, Jean Baptiste Pervin, whose Elements de conversation anglaise Turner edited in 1815, appending to it a treatise of his own on English pronunciation and idioms, and bringing Perrin's work up-to-date by providing examples of 'lettres de commerce' This additional material would, of course, he of particular benefit to those engaged in the expanding commercial markets of Europe after 1815[19]. On the eve of his departure from France in 1814, he was to publish a new and 'carefully revised' edition of a history text-book for students, Stretch's popular moralising work The Beauties of History, or Pictures of Virtue and Vice. . .anew edition improved with notes designed for the French who begin to learn English, Paris 1814. The work was 'designed for the instruction and entertainments of youth'[20].
Turner described his circumstances in 1805 and the poor state of his health thus:
This nightmarish reminiscence was written to President Bede Brewer in 1814, and shows that the memory of the Revolution years still haunted Turner years afterwards. Such sentiments were to become the stock-in-trade of much of his subsequent correspondence; they demonstrate his profound isolation and the hard struggle he had had to keep going. His cruel circumstances had left symptoms of a nervous disorder, anxiety, and depression which were to remain with him in more settled times and warp his personality[21].
In 1804, President Brewer informed Turner that he wanted him to return to England to teach theology in one of the two communities which had re-established themselves there. At the first rumour of this, Turner expressed surprise and excused himself with the admission that he had *little aptitude', since the outbreak of the Revolution had put his mind 'more or less in a ferment and consequently (was) little capable of serious application' He admitted that he was himself at fault for neglecting his studies at the onset of the Revolution, 'when all was tumult and confusion' and was therefore subsequently ilequipped to teach theology. It is difficult to grasp Turner's real feelings through the confused state of his mind. Given the black picture he painted of his struggles in revolutionary Paris, it is surprising that Turner was so reluctant to return to England. It may have been the result of anxiety, since he had not been in England for some twenty five years, but more likely he convinced himself that the comforts he now possessed in France were more preferable to any unknown devils lurking in England. Brewer was well aware of Turner's mental disorder and in ordering him back to England, thought he had his best interests at heart. Brewer, therefore, continued to try and persuade Turner to return to England but left the final decision to Parker, who was still regarded as the religious superior of Turner, despite his independent life-style. As late as April 1814, Turner was still reluctant to join the English mission, nor was he to be enticed by the offer of becoming chaplain to the Cambrai nuns who had settled at Abbots Salford in Warwickshire. Brewer, aware of Turner's strengths and interests, then turned to suggesting that he would be of great value as a French teacher in the new school at Ampleforth. This was Brewer's final attempt at persuading Turner to come over and, with a little more coaxing, it succeeded. He reinforced his invitation with the demand that Turner attend, as Parker's deputy, the General Chapter, in July 1814 at his residence at Woolton, near Liverpool. Brewer concluded with a strong recommendation that Turner come over to England because of his 'indifferent health', 'not to be on the mission, but to pass a few weeks by way of relaxation, firstly at my house, and occasionally at your sisters...After such a long absence and such confinement a jaunt of this sort will help re-establish your health and rid you of the nervous disorder you complain of.'
By August, Turner had come to live with President Brewer at Woolton, from where Brewer took him 'to bathe in the sea water' at Liverpool, hoping it would improve his health. At Liverpool, Turner lodged at Mr Roger Leigh's in Gradwell Street, and carried out a commission which the Abbe' Lasausse had asked of him. Despite Turner's persistent demands, Brewer refused to allow him to return to Paris and put him in charge of the Woolton and Croston missions whilst he visited Paris himself. In Paris, Brewer lodged in Turner's vacant apartment in the Rue Fosses S. Victor. Meanwhile, Turner came to terms with the circumstances thrust upon him; he grudgingly admitted that the English climate was indeed improving his health and that the pain in his head was disappearing. Now in a much better frame of mind, his only regret was that he had not taken up the English option earlier but had unnecessarily prolonged his sufferings in France[22].
From 1814 until Parker's death in Paris in July 1817, Turner corresponded frequently with him. Parker was now the administrator for all the old British religious properties in France (the 'Fondations Britanniques'), and since 1814 was living at the Irish College, in the rue Cheval Vert. He had, however, another apartment in the Rue des Foss6s S. Victor, close to Turner's own to which he had a key. After a great deal of effort, Parker retrieved in 1816 the old priory buildings of St Edmund in the Rue Saint-Jacques and returned to his old home where he was still officially prior, though now without a community. Turner's peevish and agitated correspondence to him reveals his concerns and his eccentricities but, above all, the lingering effect which his Revolutionary experience had had on him. Little real physical and mental improvement seems to have been made, for Turner admitted time after time that his health was poor and that he suffered from unendurable headaches, blaming these on his earlier misfortunes. He had an obsession for detail and, back in England drawing up an inventory of what he had left behind in Paris, was able to recollect precisely where every napkin and knife was to be found in the drawers of his apartment. Turner had also taken to England with him a duplicate catalogue of his book and pamphlet collection. His letters reveal the irrational suspicions of someone persecuted who damned anyone who crossed him. The mental torment of the prisoner, with its self-pity and vulnerability, continued to haunt him. In demanding to know why he had been summoned to England without being shown clearly where he was to go or what he was to do, he pleaded, 'My feelings have been long enough tortured, without making sport of them'. Not surprisingly, Brewer who was also the recipient of many of his letters, became increasingly exasperated, admitting: 'I am afraid he is rather of an unhappy turn of mind, not very easily eased'[23].
As Turner had been one of the few English religious who had remained in Paris for the duration of the Revolution and its aftermath, he had been able to share in the material benefits of the Thermidorean Reaction. By 1800, he was thus in possession of stocks to the value of 500 livres, of a state pension, and a valuable tontine, worth 400 livres, all of which continued to be paid to him after he had retired to England. He was conscious that, 'without being proud of what I have done', his hard work had produced substantial wealth, and the recognition that after his death it would be gifted to the English Benedictines, prompted him once in England to expect some remuneration during his life. For a man who had spent 'a deal of money' on his Revolutionary pamphlet collection, he showed surprisingly little interest in it, treating it merely as an investment to be sold off in the aftermath of Waterloo to any English or foreign buyer from among the allies who might guarantee the recommended price of 6000 livres which he would himself pocket: 'such Collections must necessarily be rare and consequently very dear. It cost me a deal of money, but much more time which I regret most'. Parker was constantly reminded that it was his task in Paris to 'puff the grand Collection more in the Advertisements' printing bills advertising that it could be viewed in Turner's apartment. Turner was content that his other movables be sold, and that his Jacobite relics, a medal of James II and a portrait of James III, be given away. He asked that some of his other books which he believed would be useful to him in his missionary labours should be sent over to England. Some one hundred and fifty works comprising sermons, catechisms and apologetics were therefore dispatched from Paris, together with scores of Dibdin's songs and airs, the manuscript and latest edition of his Grammaire Anglaise, as well as his other manuscript material which had provided the basis of his published work mentioned above. Parker also sent Turner's chasuble which, lying at the bottom of the trunk, was not confiscated by the customs officers[24].
After six months at Woolton, Brewer sent Turner on 30th January 1815, to teach French in the newly established school at Ampleforth, where he hoped he would be of great service, given his profound experience of the language and culture of France. Brewer was unsure whether Turner would settle in with the Ampleforth community, itself just recovering from its journeys in exile. He realised that Turner had tasted the sweetness of privacy for years and had survived a long time fending for himself. He was, therefore, 'very much afraid their mode of living (at Ampleforth) may not suit him'. He was correct. Turner felt himself plagued sufficiently at Ampleforth to demand a move after only three months there, and was therefore posted to the Stourton chaplaincy at Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, in the East Riding, where the missioner was dying. Here, he again changed his tune, thus justifying Brewer's feelings of exasperation. Unlike the community at Ampleforth, living on top of each other in Ampleforth Lodge, Turner found Holme intolerable, 'an extremely lonesome place, which will not be a means of remedying my nervous complaints...I came to this country much too late' His disappointment provoked a general criticism of the English Benedictine Congregation to surface. He blamed the Congregation for its neglect of unity and support for its individual members:
He felt 'like an Alien, as it were, amongst them' Judging by the space he devoted to this particular gripe, he seems to have especially missed the position of independence and financial security which he had had in Paris, but, as we have seen, his moods were fickle, and after adopting a position, he could just as quickly shift to its opposite. Holme was, however, infinitely preferable to Birtley in County Durham, 'among the Coal pits' which was offered as an alternate mission. Thus Turner reluctantly decided to stay where he was, though he continued to regret the lack of intelligent company in this rural isolation, which he felt would merely increase his tendency to introspection:
Once settled at Holme, Turner was able, despite his grumbles, to whet his intellectual appetite by visiting Ampleforth for the pupils' annual examinations. With his own experience of teaching in France behind him, together with his mastery of the rudiments of grammar, he was clearly interested in the school's fresh approach to teaching, following the adoption of the monitorial system then coming into vogue:
The same year, he supplied until Christmas 4at a chapel on the Ribble about 5 miles from Preston, destitute of any Pastor', before returning to Holme[26]. After Parker's death in 1817, Turner remained one of the few living representatives of the St Edmund's community. Richard Marsh, who had been Prior of St Lawrence's, Dieulouard, during the Revolution, was given the task of reviving the St Edmund's community in 1818 in the old conventual buildings of St Gregory's at Douai. Parker's mantle thus fell on both Turner and Marsh. It is significant, however, that no inducement was given Turner to settle at Douai and provide the point of continuity between the communities at Paris and Douai. That role was given to the notorious Cisalpine, Cuthbert Wilks. Marsh's task gave him the responsiblity of transferring to Douai any property belonging to the St Edmund's community still in Paris. Thus, Turner's Collection of Revolutionary pamphlets was moved, with his other effects, to Douai, probably in the early 1820s. When President Birdsall visited Turner's Paris apartment in in 1826, he found it mostly cleared. Turner, however, continued to be interested in the whereabouts of his Collection, still hoping that what was left of it might be sold. He himself remained at Holme, caring for his small congregation, for whom he compiled 'Sunday-afternoon Lectures' and sermons during the 1820s and 1830s It was well known, however, that he possessed a substantial peculium, the private funds allowed a monk when on the mission, much of it still invested in France, where it was managed by agents to whom he gave letters of procuration. In September 1837, the Provincial of the North, recommended that all his missionary subjects offer up one mass each for Turner who 'with a magnanimity of mind rarely surpassed' had donated £200 to help the poorer missions, and two years later, the Provincial was again calling on him to give the interest from his £400 sunk in the Province to the support of a poor mission. The knowledge of Turner's great means and his generosity possibly encouraged the Congregation to install him as Cathedral Prior of Worcester in 1822 and Praepositus, or local superior, of Yorkshire in 1834. But he must have also achieved, as Praepositus, the respect due to a patriarch, for he presided over the election of a new prior at Ampleforth in 1834 and was was called on to arbitrate in the dispute of 1835 between Ampleforth and Prior Park. By September 1842, his mind, however, had become enfeebled and he was of 'litttle use' in helping with current enquiries about St Edmund's, Paris, during the Revolution. The following year, he retired from Holme to Ampleforth and died there on July 13 1844, the last survivor of St Edmund's, Paris. His grave is one of the first in Monks' Wood at Ampleforth[27].
This [chart ?account] has given us an opportunity to reassess John Turner. In the oral tradition of the English Benedictines, he has been portrayed as a collaborator of the Revolution who turned his back on his monastic vocation to seek out a later career as a patriotic soldier of revolutionary France. A survey of his life does not support this picture of him as an English Benedictine Jacques Roux. The evidence rather suggests that Turner was at the mercy of fast-moving events and drifted through the Revolution, adopting a pragmatic response to its accidental demands rather than an unreserved commitment to its ideals. The lack of any radical conversion on his part to the Revolution is best illustrated by Turner's continued loyalty to his past, by the maintenance of his friendship with Henry Parker, his religious superior, and it is seen ultimately in his later career as a traditional missioner in England working within the mainstream of the English Benedictine apostolate. Evidence in the Collection which defends the Gallican Church of the ancien regime as well as Turner's acquaintance with at least one important non-juring priest, suggest that he had reservations about the Revolution's ecclesiastical policies. That Turner neither left the priesthood like so many others nor became seriously deranged is probably due to the benign influence of Henry Parker who acted as a steadying agent behind the scenes. The received notion of Parker as the real hero of the St Edmund's community thus remains undimmed. Thanks to him, Turner never became marginalised, but remained a religious, whose relations with his brethren continued without a break, the result,, in large measure, of Parker's persistent letter-writing. Despite the Revolution, therefore, Turner's career had a continuity without any major breaks; when he became a missioner in 1814, he knew exactly which up-to-date books and materials he required for his new apostolate.
Turner's career is so unique among English clergy of the time that it is worth outlining in some detail since it helps to enrich our understanding of the Revolution's effect on such men. It shows it was possible for an English priest to survive in revolutionary Paris and to find work as a teacher. Undoubtedly, the experience affected Turner's health, and his belief that he had come to the mission too late suggests that he was not in 1814 the rebellious young monk he had been in 1789. One is surprised to find how wealthy the Revolution made him. It is ironic that he became as much a revolutionary profiteer as those others who plundered the Church's wealth by taking over its libraries and financial resources. Thanks to his generous income, he took the opportunity to indulge in his literary interests, and whilst he might labour the point of his isolation and loneliness, he clearly stated in his letters that he had many friends and acquaintances in Paris whom he frequently visited. It is arguable, then, that the Revolution introduced him to a much wider world than he would have been able to experience if he had remained a conventual. His Collection de Piices relative a la Revolution is, of course, what makes Turner of particular interest, and that Collection was the product of his own wealth and the circles in which he mixed. For ten years it absorbed all his time and energy as well as his money, and it is fitting that it remains his greatest memorial.