TEMPLE, Sir William (1628-99)

Born London 1628; died Moor Park, Surrey 1699. Grandson and namesake of the

secretary to Sir Philip Sidney who was Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Brought up by

his uncle, Dr. Henry Hammond. Educated at Bishop Stortford School and Emmanuel

College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1644. He studied under Ralph Cudworth for

two years but left without taking a degree. The next decade of his life was spent travelling

in France, Spain and Belgium and is most remarkable for his long, romantic courtship of

Dorothy Osborne under the adverse circumstances of lengthy separations and of families

divided by political hostilities, where each was determined to find a more advantageous

marriage for their children. Their marriage finally took place in 1655, but only after a bout

of smallpox had left Dorothy severely scarred. They moved to Ireland, where in 1661,

Temple was elected to the Irish Parliament. In 1663, the family moved back to England

and settled at Sheen where Temple began to develop extraordinary skills as a gardener. In

1665, with the help of the Duke of Ormonde, Temple began a distinguished diplomatic

career. He was envoy to Muenster, Brussels, and Aix-la-Chapelle, then English

Ambassador to The Hague. He received a baronetcy in 1666 and gained considerable fame

for negotiating the Triple Alliance between England, Holland and Spain in 1668. He

resigned his ambassadorship in 1671 when it became clear that Charles II’s secret pro-

French policy was undermining his treaty obligations to support the Dutch. Temple

submitted a report, A Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire (published in

1680) that subtly, but unsuccessfully, argued that England’s interest in trade and peace

required adherence to the Triple Alliance against France. He then retired back to Sheen.

The third Dutch war began in 1672.

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 In forced retirement from 1671 to 1674, Temple wrote several books and essays.

Amongst these were the Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government (written

1672, first published 1680) and Observations upon the United Provinces of the

Netherlands (1673). The latter was designed, in part, to rally English support for the

Dutch and it certainly helped to make Charles II’s war against the Netherlands unpopular.

In 1674, Temple was recalled to help negotiate peace with the Dutch. Shortly after the

treaty was signed, he was again appointed ambassador to The Hague (1674-6 and 1678-9)

where he helped facilitate the marriage in 1677 between William of Orange and Charles

II’s niece, Mary. He was offered the position of Secretary of State three times, in 1674,

1677 and 1679 but declined each time. It seems that he did not wish to become too

entangled in court intrigue nor to be too closely associated with Charles II’s duplicitous

policies. In 1679, Temple briefly engineered an experimental reform of the Privy Council

intended to produce more open, representative and coherent government. It failed. From

1679 to 1681, he served as MP for Cambridge University, despite the objections of the

Bishop of Ely, who found Temple’s support for religious toleration distasteful. Several

factors, including his pro-Dutch views, his lack of enthusiasm for the Duke of York and an

increasing rift with George Savile, the recently created Earl of Halifax, led to Temple being

struck off the list of privy councillors in 1681. He retired to tend the gardens of his newly

purchased house, Moor Park, near Farnham.

In 1685, when James II succeeded to the throne, Temple kept the promise he had made

to James ‘not to divide the royal family’. William of Orange, respecting Temple’s promise,

never informed him of his intention to invade England. But after the 1688 Revolution,

William offered Temple the Chief-Secretaryship. Temple declined but on several occasions

during the last decade of Temple’s life, William III consulted him at Moor Park about

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public affairs. William appointed Temple’s son Secretary for War in 1689. But Temple’s

pleasure turned rapidly to grief, when, a few days later, his son, depressed by an error in

political judgement, committed suicide.

Much of Temple’s partial retirement from public life from 1681 to 1699 was spent

writing, refining and publishing books and essays. From 1689 onwards, he was assisted by

his sometimes ‘petulant’ secretary, Jonathan Swift. Temple’s main political writings of this

period were Of Popular Discontents (written around 1685, published 1701), Of Heroic

Virtue (1690) and An Introduction to the History of England (1695). His other works

included two volumes of Memoirs (published in 1691 and 1709) and his most famous

essay of all, a rather light defence of the ancients entitled Upon the Ancient and Modern

Learning (1690). Jonathan Swift’s satire, The Battle of the Books (1697), is a reply to

Temple’s several critics in this continuation of largely French controversies about the

relative merits of the ancients and the moderns. As well as advising Swift in his earliest

literary productions, Temple also persuaded James Tyrrell to write his three-volume The

General History of England (1696-1704). He also contributed several letters to John

Dunton’s Athenian Gazette (1690-97), which were mainly about talismen. During the last

three decades of his life, Temple suffered considerably from gout and ‘the spleen’. He

died at Moor Park in early 1699, having gained a considerable reputation as a literary

stylist and as a man of impeccable integrity.

Temple’s Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government (written 1672) is

noteworthy for developing a coherent consensualist theory of government from

patriarchalist beginnings. His patriarchalism is anthropological rather than biblical and his

arguments are equally opposed to the fictions of social contract theorists and to the

dogmatic absolutism of Sir Robert Filmer. Drawing on insights borrowed from Aristotle,

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Epicurus, Bodin, Montaigne, Spelman and James Harrington, Temple dismissed states-of-

nature and social contract arguments as fictions fit only for poets. Power is natural and so

is the authority of parents. Climate, working upon uniform human nature, disposes some

peoples to prefer arbitrary rulers, others ‘more moderate governments’. Over time,

natural paternal authority passes into political authority, which arises from opinion and

custom. Here some kind of contract may have intervened between unequal heads of

households, each with their own natural, paternal authority. But there is no evidence that

this was always the case. Nor is there any single best form of government. Whatever

form of government a people is disposed to accept ‘by custom and use’ is best for it. It

will endure because it will elicit the consent of the governed and alternative forms will not.

Echoes of Temple’s views can be heard in John Locke’s concessions to patriarchalism in

Two Treatises of Government (1689) and in Viscount Bolingbroke’s anti-contractualism in

the mid eighteenth century. But more significantly, Temple’s conclusion that whatever the

constitutional form of government may be, the ‘best governments’ are the ‘best

administered’ helped inspire an important shift from seventeenth century concerns with

constitutional forms to eighteenth century concerns with administration. In 1701, Samuel

Parker, a son of the nonjuring Bishop of Oxford, attacked Temple’s notion that the source

of political authority lay in opinion and custom. For Parker, drawing on theories of

biblical patriarchalism, the authority of civil magistrates was divine.

Temple’s Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1673) contains

an account of a complex ‘confederacy of seven sovereign Provinces’, with a moderate,

very well administered government rooted in custom and usage, which elicits the consent

of a complex and diverse people. Trade and commerce, it appears, are the source of

Dutch civic virtues. Dutch prosperity arises both from the industriousness, diversity and

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frugality of a population that was large in relation to the size of the country and from a

favourable balance of trade. The principles and practices of their system of religious

toleration, extending unofficially even to Catholics, is a model to be copied. The work

proved very popular. It went through seven editions to 1705 and was translated into

Dutch in 1673 and French in 1685. Locke’s friend, Jean Le Clerc, published a supplement

to it in 1715. Over a century later, Sir James Macintosh believed that Temple’s praise for

Dutch religious liberty could not be bettered.

The essay Of Popular Discontents offers a kind of pathology of civil society where the

Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government had offered an anatomy. Men are by

nature ‘generally and naturally restless and unquiet’. Differences in fortune and

circumstance fuel discontents. These, in turn, are fuelled by self-seeking, ‘crafty men’.

Such are the murky origins of revolts and revolutions that generally end in tyranny or

conquest. All that can be done to minimize these dangers is to avoid innovation in

inherited laws and institutions, to avoid party political divisions, to encourage habits of

‘industry and parsimony’, and to ‘prevent dangers from abroad’. Much of the essay is

devoted to suggesting practical schemes for contemporary England. But Temple is

adamant that no schemes for perfect government will ever secure peace, good order or

public contentment. The best governments are the best administered and the best

administered are those ‘where the best men govern’. But the problem will always remain

that there are no guarantees the best will in fact govern.

Of Heroic Virtue (1690) is a remarkably rich essay. It surveys the early history, myths

and literatures of China, Peru, Scythia (especially the Goths), and the Arab empire

(especially the Turks), and glances at more familiar ancient European sources, all in search

of examples of ‘heroic virtue’, which Temple divides into two kinds: civic and military.

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The essay is especially noteworthy for its praise of both absolute government in China and

the civic virtues and civil government of the ancient Goths. The civic variety of heroic

virtue, Temple argues, is superior to the military.

An Introduction to the History of England (1695) was heavily indebted, though

without acknowledgment, to Samuel Daniel’s First Part of the History of England (1613).

The work emphasizes narrative over research. Temple displays a sensitivity to historical

context and an impatience with the historian’s craft, which he characterizes as a search

through ‘Dust and Rubbish’. The political significance of Temple’s narrative, however,

was manifold. He rejected traditional myths of English origins as simply unfounded

inventions of the ‘Wit or Folly’ of ancient authors. He rejected the political myths of both

a Norman Yoke and of the unbroken continuity of the ancient constitution, which featured

so prominently in contemporary constitutional controversies. He helped establish the

increasingly widespread view of the Middle Ages as ‘barbarous and illiterate’. And both

his glowing praise of William the Conqueror and his account of the gains to the country

from the Norman Conquest were unmistakably intended as praise for William III and as

justification for the 1688 Revolution as a just conquest in a just war. Abel Boyer reported

that this was ‘the general opinion’ of Temple’s first readers. But William Nicolson

considered it the ‘most excellent account’ of the Norman Conquest that had yet been

written.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1673).

Miscellanea (1680).

Miscellanea. The Second Part (1690).

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Miscellanea. The Third Part (1701). Posthumously published by Jonathan Swift.

Other Relevant Works

An Introduction to the History of England (1695).

Parker, Samuel, Sylva: Familiar Letters Upon Occasional Subjects (1701).

The Works of Sir William Temple, Bart, 2 vols (1720).

Further Reading

Dictionary of National Biography.

Douglas, David C., English Scholars (1939), pp. 153-4, 362.

Woodbridge, Homer E., Sir William Temple: the Man and his Work (1940).

Originally published in: A. Pyle (ed.), The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British

Philosophers (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000). 2 Volumes.