the south-west of Scotland, whose object was to crush the opposition of the covenanters to Charles II's and Archbishop Sharp's attempts to enforce episcopacy on the Scottish church. He resorted to his old method of billeting soldiers on the recalcitrant covenanters, and was very active in extorting fines for non-attendance at public worship. It appears that he did not go beyond his commission, nor as far as he was urged by Sharp, Rothes, and others. His measures, however, provoked the ‘Pentland’ rising in November 1666. Turner was at Dumfries, where he was surprised by the covenanters on the 15th and taken prisoner. They carried him with them on their march towards Edinburgh, and he was frequently on the point of being put to death; during the engagement on the Pentland Hills (28 Nov.) his guards fled and he recovered his liberty. He was chief witness at the trial of James Wallace (d. 1678) [q. v.], the leader of the covenanters, on 26 Feb. 1667, but the blame of the insurrection was laid on his rigour, and on 26 Nov. following Charles II ordered the Scottish privy council to inquire into his conduct. On their report in the following February, Turner was deprived of his commissions (10 March 1668). Thenceforth he lived in retirement at Glasgow, or on his property at Craig, Ayrshire, occupied with his ‘Memoirs’ and other compositions. In October 1683 he was again put in command of some troops in view of renewed disturbances in the south-west of Scotland (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. vi. p. 167), and on 3 Jan. 1683–4 he was commissioned to try the rebels (Wodrow, 1829, iv. 5). He was granted a pension by James II (Cal. State Papers, 1689–90, p. 383), and probably died soon after 1685. An engraving by R. White was prefixed to ‘Pallas Armata,’ 1683. A portrait medal is in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. His wife, Mary White, the granddaughter of a knight, whom he met at Newry in 1643, and married at Hexham on 10 Nov. 1646, survived him, and resided with the family of Lieutenant Richard Turnbull at Lamlash, Arran, dying about 1716.
Turner was a ‘soldier to the backbone’ (Gardiner); he was ‘naturally fierce, but was mad when he was drunk, and that was very often … he was a learned man, but had been always in armies, and knew no other rule but to obey orders’ (Burnet, Own Time, 1766, i. 296). Wodrow describes him as ‘very bookish.’
He published in 1683 ‘Pallas Armata. Military Essayes of the Ancient Grecian, Roman, and Modern Art of War. Written in 1670 and 1671,’ London, fol., dedicated to the Duke of York. He also left a volume of manuscripts (now Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 12067), comprising memoirs, philosophical essays, biographical notices of Mary Stuart, Mary Tudor, Mazarin, Lucrezia Borgia, and others; translations into English verse from Petrarch, Ronsard, and other poets; a criticism of Guthry's ‘Memoirs,’ which Turner saw in manuscript; and various letters to him from Burnet, the Dukes of Hamilton, and others. The memoirs, with a few other pieces, were privately printed about 1819; 101 copies were purchased by the Bannatyne Club and issued with its name on the title-page in 1829.
Turner divides with Major-general Robert Monro [q. v.] the honour of being the original of Dugald Dalgetty, whose character is, however, more akin to Turner's than to Monro's (Scott, Legend of Montrose, pref.; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. viii. 144; Blackwood's Mag. October 1898; Literature, 22 Oct. and 5 Nov. 1898). Turner's career may also have suggested some incidents in ‘Old Mortality.’ The ‘Pallas Armata’ is there mentioned as the literary pabulum of Major Bellenden, and its author forms the subject of a note (chap. xi. and note).
A contemporary ‘Colonel’ James Turner (d. 1664), born at Hadley, near Barnet, the son of a minister there, and said to have been apprenticed to a lace merchant in Cheapside, became a goldsmith and lieutenant-colonel of the city militia during the civil war. Pepys describes him as ‘a mad swearing, confident fellow, well known by all, and by me.’ His vices and extravagances led him into debt and crime, and he was executed at Lime Street on 21 Jan. 1663–4 for committing a burglary at the house of Francis Tryon, a London merchant. His death was witnessed by Pepys (who paid a shilling and stood ‘upon the wheel of a cart, in great pain, above an hour before the execution was done’), and was made the occasion of many catch-penny tracts (see Life and Death of James Turner and other pamphlets in Brit Mus. Cat.; Pepys, Diary, ed. Braybrooke, ii. 270–4; Granger, Biogr. Hist. iv. 213).
[Turner's Memoirs; Cal. State Papers, Dom. passim; Add. MSS. 23117 f. 1, 23119 f. 126; Egerton MSS. 2536 f. 341; Burnet's Own Time, ed. 1766, i. 296, 326, 346, and Lives of the Dukes of Hamilton; Hamilton MSS. Ap. Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. vi.; Lauderdale Papers (Camden Soc.), ii. 82, 83; Lamont's Diary (Maitland Club), p. 194; Lauder of Fountainhall's Hist. Notices, pp. 388, 391, 426, Baillie's Journals, iii. 457, Nicoll's
