" The father of Alexander Pope was a London merchant, a devout Catholic, and not improbably a convert to Catholicism. His mother was one of seventeen children of William Turner, of York ; one of her sisters was the wife of Cooper, the wellknown portraitpainter. Mrs. Cooper was the poet's godmother ; she died when he was five years old, leaving to her sister, Mrs. Pope, a "grindingstone and muller, " and their mother's "picture in limning ; " and to her nephew, the little Alexander, all her "books, pictures, and medals set in gold or otherwise... ".