Edith Pope (1643–1733)

Timeline

• 18 June 1643

  Baptism of Edith Turner

  Edith Turner is born at Worsbrough, near Barnsley, 50 miles south of York, the daughter of Thomasine (Newton) Turner and William Turner. Edith, the fourteenth of at least sixteen children, is baptised in the Anglican faith at Worsboough near Barnsley. The family has for several generations "carefully trodden the borderline between Catholicism and protestantism, those of the former faith depending on those prepared—publicly at least—to profess the latter" (Howard Erskine-Hill, 'Pope, Alexander (1688–1744)', ODNB, 2004).

• 1645

  Move to Kexborough

  Around 1645 the Turner family moved to Birthwaite Hall, Kexborough, 4 miles north of Barnsley.

• 1665

  Father dies

• 1681

  Mother dies

• after June 1684

  Marriage to Alexander Pope, senior

  No marriage date is known, but it would have been after Edith was named as a beneficiary in a will with her maiden name.

• 21 May 1688

  Birth of son Alexander Pope

  Likely at no. 2 Plough Court just off Lombard Street in the City of London, at the age of forty-four Edith gives birth to her only child, Alexander Pope.

• by 1692

  Move to Hammersmith

  Alexander senior moves his family from Plough Court to the village of Hammersmith, about five miles west of the center of London. They likely remain there until moving to Binfield.

• ca. 1700

  Move to Binfield, in Windsor Forest

  Husband Alexander Pope Senior had acquired the house at Binfield, Berkshire, in 1698. He moves his family there around 1700.

• March 1716

  Move to Chiswick

  The Pope family is obliged to take their leave of Windsor Forest and move to Chiswick, in anticipation of "An Act for appointing Commissioners to inquire of the estates of certain traitors, and of Popish recusants, and of estates given to superstitious uses, in order to raise money out of them severally for the use of the public." Royal assent to the Commissioners Bill is given on 26 June.

• 23 October 1717

  Death of husband Alexander

  Alexander Pope senior dies, aged seventy-five.

• 1719

  Move to Twickenham

  The success of the Iliad subscription sales allows son Alexander Pope to move to Twickenham, a village to the west of London, where he leases cottages on a small plot of land on the banks of the Thames. Edith accompanies him and remains at Twickenham for the remaining years of her life.

• 7 June 1733

  Death of Edith Pope

  Three days after his mother's death, Alexander Pope writes to his friend Jonathan Richardson:

  upon her countenance such an expression of Tranquillity, nay almost of pleasure, that far from horrid, it is even amiable to behold it. It wou'd afford the finest Image of a Saint expir'd, that ever Painting drew; and it wou'd be the greatest obligation which even That obliging Art could ever bestow on a friend if you cou'd come and sketch it for me. ... I will defer her interment till tomorrow night.

  Edith Pope is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's, Twickenham, likely in the evening as was common for Catholic burials in Protestant grounds.