Samuel Turner (informer)
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Samuel Turner was the son of Jacob Turner of Turner's Glen, near Newry, a gentleman of good fortune in County Armagh. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he entered on 2 July 1780, graduating B.A. in 1784, and LL.D. in 1787. Turner was called to the Irish bar in 1788, but does not seem to have practised. Although no evidence has been found of his previous involvement in democratic politics, in January 1797, by his own account, Turner was admitted not only to the United Irish Society but also to its national directory. By March 1797 he was being reported to the Arthur Hill, Marquess of Downshire, as one of the three most violent agitators in the Newry district.[2]
In April 1797 Turner enhanced his reputation as a firebrand when he challenged the Crown's commander-in-chief in Ireland, Henry Luttrell, Earl of Carhampton, to a duel after the latter had reproached him in a Newry inn with wearing United Irish colours and torn from him the offending green necktie. Carhampton apologised.[3]
Six weeks later, however, Turner spoke to the assistant barrister for County Down, Joseph Pollock about the prospects for surrendering himself under a recent amnesty proclamation. Outwardly still loyal to the United Irish, at the beginning of June Turner was one of the five who represented Ulster at a meeting of United Irishmen in Dublin to consider their state of preparedness for an uprising and reception of a French expedition. Like other Ulster leaders, threatened with arrest, he soon fled to the Continent joining other United Irish fugitives in the German free city of Hamburg. In the late summer of 1797, he visited Paris where he met the foreign minister, Talleyrand. On his return to Hamburg the French ambassador, Jean Frédéric Reinhard, gave him a passport enabling him to go to London and meet both with Lord Edward FitzGerald, who was at the head of the United Irish national directory, and Downshire.[3]
