Richard Turner (reformer)

Richard Turner (died 1565?) was an English Protestant reformer and Marian exile.

Born in Staffordshire, he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow. He graduated B.A. on 19 July 1524, M.A. on 12 July 1529, and B.D. on 27 January 1536, and supplicated for D.D. in 1552. On 25 January 1536 he was elected to a perpetual chantry in the king's college at Windsor. He was appointed by Ralph Morice, Thomas Cranmer's secretary, to be rector of Chartham, Kent, where he neglected Catholic rites.

He was a staunch supporter of royal supremacy, and was able to avoid the dangers besetting an ecclesiastic under Henry VIII. In 1543 a bill of accusation was presented against him and others of Cranmer's chaplains and preachers at the sessions for not complying with the statute of the Six Articles; this attack was aimed at Cranmer himself, who however possessed the favour of the king, and the indictments in consequence came to nothing. Turner was at that time living in the family of Ralph Morice. On 1 July 1545 Turner was instituted to the vicarage of St. Stephen's-by-Saltash in Cornwall; he has been doubtfully identified with the Richard Turner who was appointed rector of Chipping Ongar in Essex in 1544, and vicar of Hillingdon in Middlesex in 1545. In July 1549, during popular unrest in Kent against the reformers, Turner went to the rioters' camp and preached against them, narrowly escaping being hanged.

Turner suggested to John Marbeck, organist at Windsor, the compilation of his concordance of the English Bible which appeared in July 1550. He had been appointed one of the Six Preachers in Canterbury Cathedral in 1550. On 24 December 1551 he was appointed to a prebend at Windsor, and he also about this time obtained the vicarage of Dartford in Kent.

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