St Catherine's Day
Today is the feastday of St Catherine of Alexandria, one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. The famous wheel of her martyrdom appears on many coats of arms worldwide but seems in Scottish Heraldry to be quite rare..
In Volume One of the PRAABS (The Lyon Register) we find two very constrasted brothers, the sons of Rev Patrick Turner, Minister of Dalkeith. The elder, the bloodthirsty soldier Sir James Turner (1615-1686), of whom Daniel Defoe wrote: “ It is impossible to give the details of the cruelties and inhuman usage the poor people suffered from this butcher, for such he was rather than a soldier.”
There is, as usual, no exemplification of the arms in Volume One so here is a rough sketch:
His brother, Rev Archibald Turner (1629-1681), Minister of St Giles, matriculated the same arms with a crescent for difference.
When in 1886 Sir William Turner, then Professor of Anatomy, later Principal of Edinburgh University, matriculated arms he used the Catherine Wheel and three drops of blood, now guttés de sang in a different arrangement, he also changed the motto but kept the heart crest:
In 1956, Major General William Turner, a grandson of Principal Turner through his second son with issue, matriculated again with a bordure Gules:
