![Sir Wm Temple](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Sir_Wm_Temple.jpg)
Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (25 April 162827 January 1699) was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
diplomat,
statesman and
essayist
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...
. An important diplomat, he was recalled in 1679, and for a brief period was a leading advisor to Charles II, with whom he then fell out. He retired to the country, and thereafter occupied himself with gardening and writing. He is best remembered today for two aspects of his life after retirement: a passage on the designs of
Chinese gardens, written without ever having seen one, and for employing the young
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubl ...
as his secretary. The first is sometimes given as an early indication of the
English landscape garden
The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...
style, praising irregularity in design.
Biography
![Blazon of Temple Baronets of The Nash (1876)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Blazon_of_Temple_Baronets_of_The_Nash_%281876%29.svg)
William Temple was the son of Sir
John Temple of
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
, an Irish judge and
Master of the Rolls
The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the President of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and Head of Civil Justice. As a judge, the Master of ...
. Born in London, and educated at
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Temple travelled across Europe, and was for some time a member of the
Irish Parliament, employed on various diplomatic missions. During his time as a diplomat, Temple successfully negotiated the
Triple Alliance of 1668 and the marriage of the
Prince of Orange
Prince of Orange (or Princess of Orange if the holder is female) is a title originally associated with the sovereign Principality of Orange, in what is now southern France and subsequently held by sovereigns in the Netherlands.
The title ...
and
Princess Mary of England in 1677. On his return in 1679 he was much consulted by
Charles II, but disapproving of the anti-Dutch courses adopted, retired to his house at
Sheen
Sheen may refer to:
Places
* Sheen or West Sheen, an alternative name for Richmond, London, England
** East Sheen
** North Sheen
** Sheen Priory
* Sheen, Staffordshire, a village and civil parish in the Staffordshire Moorlands, England
* Sheenb ...
.
He was called out of retirement to implement a plan of his design to reform government rule. He was the architect of the
Privy Council Ministry of 1679, which, though it failed, was an early effort to establish an executive along the lines of what later came to be understood as Cabinet government. Charles II disapproved of the scheme, which in his view took away too much of the
Royal Prerogative
The royal prerogative is a body of customary authority, privilege and immunity, recognized in common law and, sometimes, in civil law jurisdictions possessing a monarchy, as belonging to the sovereign and which have become widely vested in th ...
, although in the exceptional circumstances of the
Exclusion Crisis he was willing to give it a brief trial.
Temple later left Sheen and purchased Compton Hall,
Farnham around 1686. He renamed the house
Moor Park after
Moor Park, Hertfordshire
Moor Park is a private residential estate in the Three Rivers District of Hertfordshire, England. Located approximately northwest of central London and adjacent to the Greater London boundary, it is a suburban residential development.
History ...
, a house he much admired and which influenced the formal gardens he built at Farnham. Here the later-famous
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubl ...
was his secretary for most of the period from 1689 onward. It was here that Swift met
Esther Johnson
Esther Johnson (13 March 1681 – 28 January 1728) was the English friend of Jonathan Swift, known as "Stella". Whether or not she and Swift were secretly married, and if so why the marriage was never made public, is a subject of debate.
Pare ...
, who became his lifelong companion and whom he immortalised as ''Stella''. Despite rumours that she was Temple's own daughter, the evidence suggests that her widowed mother lived in the house as companion to Temple's sister Martha. Temple installed his family motto "God has given us these opportunities for tranquility" above the door and took great pleasure from this house in his retirement from public life.
He took no part in the
Glorious Revolution, but acquiesced to the new regime, and was offered, but refused, a role as
Secretary of State.
Temple died in
Moor Park,
Surrey,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
in 1699.
His memorial in
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...
names also his wife Dorothy, and their daughter Diana; in 1722 the name of his sister Martha was added. He was much loved by his friends; Swift wrote that all that was good and amiable in mankind departed with him. The normally cynical
Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland
Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, (5 September 164128 September 1702) was an English nobleman and politician of the Spencer family. An able and gifted statesman, his caustic temper and belief in absolute monarchy nevertheless made him nu ...
, was deeply grieved by his death, writing to Temple's sister Martha that "the chief pleasure I proposed to myself was to see him sometimes".
Marriage and children
![Dorothy, Lady Temple by Gaspar Netscher](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Dorothy%2C_Lady_Temple_by_Gaspar_Netscher.jpg)
Temple married
Dorothy Osborne
Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple (1627–1695) was a British writer of letters and wife of Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet.
Life
Osborne was born at Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, England, the youngest of twelve children of Sir Peter Osborne, Lie ...
(d. 1695), a daughter of Sir Peter Osborne and Dorothy Danvers, in 1654. It was a love marriage and the couple were noted for constancy during their long engagement: Dorothy resisted pressure from her family to accept any of several other more eligible suitors, including
Henry Cromwell
Henry Cromwell (20 January 1628 – 23 March 1674) was the fourth son of Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth Bourchier, and an important figure in the Parliamentarian regime in Ireland.
Biography Early life
Henry Cromwell – the fourth son of Oli ...
and her cousin
Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds
Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, (20 February 1632 – 26 July 1712), was a prominent English politician. Under King Charles II (and known at the time as Lord Danby), he was the leading figure in the government for around five years i ...
. She and William outlived all of their nine children, most of whom died in infancy; the
suicide of their adult son John in 1689 was the greatest tragedy of their lives. Dorothy died in 1695 and after her death William's strong-minded sister Martha, Lady Giffard kept house for him. She had married Sir Thomas Giffard in 1662 and been widowed young; she spent many years with William and Dorothy, for both of whom she had a deep affection. In her last years she wrote a short Life of her brother which was published anonymously after her death in 1722. Sir William's children by Dorothy Osborne included:
![Hatchment DorothyTemple StMary'sChurch Coddenham Suffolk](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Hatchment_DorothyTemple_StMary%27sChurch_Coddenham_Suffolk.jpg)
*John Temple (d. 1689), who "as a compliment to his father" was made
Paymaster General
His Majesty's Paymaster General or HM Paymaster General is a ministerial position in the Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom. The incumbent Paymaster General is Jeremy Quin MP.
History
The post was created in 1836 by the merger of the posi ...
and, on 12 April 1689,
Secretary at War
The Secretary at War was a political position in the English and later British government, with some responsibility over the administration and organization of the Army, but not over military policy. The Secretary at War ran the War Office. Afte ...
in succession to
William Blathwayt. A few days later, having filled his pockets with stones, he threw himself from a boat into the strong current beneath London Bridge, and was drowned. The suicide, which created the greatest sensation at the time, was probably due to official anxiety, aggravated by the treachery of a confidential agent whom he had recommended to the king. He married Marie du Plessis-Rambouillet, daughter of Paul du Plessis-Rambouillet of France, of a Huguenot family, by whom he left two daughters:
**Elizabeth Temple of Moor Park, who married her cousin, John Temple (d. 1753), second son of Sir John Temple, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, but left no issue;
**Dorothy Temple, who married Nicholas Bacon (1686–1767) of Shrubland Hall, Coddenham, Suffolk, and left issue. His funeral hatchment showing the arms of Temple survives in Coddenham Church.
Letters written by Dorothy to Temple before their marriage have been published in a number of editions.
Retirement and gardening
Temple saw his retirement from political life to his country estate at
Moor Park as following the example of the Greek philosopher
Epicurus. In his essay of 1685 (first published in 1690), "Upon the Gardens of Epicurus" Temple wrote of "the sweetness and satisfaction of this retreat, where since my resolution taken of never entering again into any public employments, I have passed five years without once going to town". As a result of his introducing the term ''
sharawadgi'' in this essay, Temple has been sometimes considered the originator of the
English landscape garden
The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...
style.
As a
garden writer, Temple was rather typical of his period in England, but perhaps to an extreme degree, in being highly interested in growing fruit trees of all sorts and very little interested in flowers:
I will not enter upon any Account of Flowers, having pleased myself only with seeing and smelling them, and not troubled myself with the Care, which is more the Ladies Part than the Mens; but the Success is wholly in the Gardener.
Temple only mentioned the concept of ''sharawadgi'' in a brief passage:
Amongst us, the Beauty of Building and Planting is placed chiefly in some Proportions, Symettries and Uniformities; our Walks and our Trees ranged so, as to answer one another, and at exact Distances. The Chinese scorn this way of Planting ....their greatest reach of Imagination, is employed in contriving Figures, where the Beauty shall be great, and strike the Eye, but without any Order or Disposition of Parts, that shall be commonly or easily discerned. And although we have hardly any Notion of this sort of Beauty, yet they have a particular word to express it... But I should hardly advise any of these Attempts upon the Order of Gardens among us; they are Adventures of too hard Achievement for any common hands ...
Death
Temple died on 27 January 1699. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart, by his special wish, was placed in a silver casket under the sun-dial at Moor Park, near his favourite window seat. Swift recorded, "He died at one o clock in the morning and with him all that was great and good among men".
Bibliography
His literary works consist for the most part of essays, which were published as ''Miscellanea'' in volumes in the 1690s, then collected by Swift and given a collected volume in 1720. However, he did write some longer pieces such as ''
Observations upon the United Provinces'' and ''Essay on the Original and Nature of Government''.
*''Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands'', 1673. Republished by
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
, with an introduction by G. N. Clark, Cambridge, 2011.
*
*''The Works of Sir William Temple'', London, 1720; new. ed. 1757
See also
*
General opinion, a concept introduced by Temple in his ''Essay on the Original and Nature of Government''
[Hans Speier, "Historical Development of Public Opinion", ''American Journal of Sociology'', Vol. 55, No. 4 (Jan., 1950), pp. 376–388.]
* Archive.org
"Temple, William, Sir, 1628-1699"
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
* Pierre Marambaud: Sir William Temple, sa vie, son œuvre, Paris, Éditions Minard, 1968, VI-431 p.
External links
*
Essays by Temple on Quotidiana.org*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Temple, William
1628 births
1699 deaths
Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Baronets in the Baronetage of England
17th-century English diplomats
English essayists
Members of the Privy Council of England
Ambassadors of England to the Netherlands
Masters of the Rolls in Ireland
Members of the Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) for County Carlow constituencies
Irish MPs 1661–1666
English Landscape Garden style