TEMPLE, Edmund (1622-68), of Sulby, Northants.

Born probably at Stantonbury and baptised at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, Edmund Temple was the third son of a younger son, and had many family links with parliamentary service. His grandfather was Thomas Temple of Burton Dassett, Warwickshire, who sat for Andover in 1589, his uncle was Sir Peter Temple* of Stowe and Burton Dassett, a debtor on a spectacular scale, and his first cousin was Sir Richard Temple, the third baronet, whose election for Warwickshire in 1654 provoked opposition on the grounds of his minority. Edmund Temple later married into a family that had provided at least one Elizabethan Member, Francis Harvey of Hardingstone, Northamptonshire.9HP Commons 1558-1603. He was 20 years old when civil war broke out in England in 1642, and his career – and that of his brother, Purbeck Temple – lay in the parliamentarian army. Purbeck served with Oliver Cromwell* in Parliament’s main field army under the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux), and fought at Edgehill. By August 1644, Edmund Temple was a captain in the same regiment in which his brother was major: that of Col. John Fiennes, his cousin. Fiennes had raised this regiment of Essex’s army in June, at Warwick, providing a first direct link between Temple and the county he was to serve in Parliament.10SP28/139/19; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 476. Temple was a member of the parliamentarian council of war which decided to raise the siege of Banbury, when under pressure from the 3rd earl of Northampton (James Compton*, Lord Compton).11A Most True and Perfect Relation (1642), 8 (E.126.38); Perfect Occurrences no. 12 (25 Oct.-1 Nov. 1644) sig. M3 (BL Burney Coll. 19A); Temple Memoirs, 54. He was at Derby in May 1645, but it is likely that his despatch to Gloucester garrison as a captain in September, at the age of 23, was his first posting outside Warwickshire or the adjacent counties of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire.12SP28/139/19; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 356; 1645-7, p. 147. The funding of his troop was taken care of by Thomas Pury I*.13CJ iv. 294a.

Temple’s name is not to be found among the officer lists of the New Model on its inception, and he is therefore likely to have continued to serve in the county or garrison forces. By May 1647 he was in favour with Murrough O’Brien, 6th Baron of Inchiquin [I], who gave Temple the regiment in Ireland that Purbeck Temple had commanded during the short-lived lord lieutenancy of Philip Sidney*, Viscount Lisle. The links of influence here were surely through Sir John Temple*, former master of the rolls in Ireland, commentator on the Irish rebellion and chief adviser to Lisle. Sir John was second cousin to Purbeck and Edmund, and he is likely to have found his kinsmen places in the Lisle expedition. It seems to have been Purbeck who introduced Edmund Temple to Inchiquin, and through the last-named, Temple came into contact with William Jephson* and Sir Philip Percivalle*.14HMC Egmont, i. 406. His close friendship with Jephson must date from this period. Nevertheless, Temple seems to have maintained some independence from Inchiquin; in June he had still not taken up his regimental command, and Inchiquin and Percivalle were left wondering about Temple’s intentions.15HMC Egmont, i. 416. In late October or early November 1647, Inchiquin had to intervene to prevent a duel between Temple and Sir William Bridges; Temple’s boldness and energy were more fruitfully channelled into active service in the field. He was probably the Col. Temple who urged on Lord Inchiquin to fight the Irish rebels at Knocknanuss in November. At this battle, he commanded the right wing of cavalry and routed the horse and foot of the Irish rebels.16Ludlow, Memoirs, i. 195; HMC Egmont, i. 481, 483.

Temple probably returned to England when Inchiquin defected to the king in April 1648; in September of that year, his petition for arrears of pay as an army officer was recommended by the Commons to the Lords. An order was brought to the Lords for him to receive £1,000, part of the arrears (6 Sept.), and the Lords concurred. Temple was to collect this money from the estates of delinquents he was to discover to the Committee for Advance of Money, and on 8 September 1648, he informed on William Stafford, of his own county of Northamptonshire. The money was to be shared between him and Edward Peyto*. In December 1649, William Jephson nominated Temple as a recipient of a pay-out from the estates of three delinquents he ‘discovered’.17LJ x. 486a, 491a, 491b, 492b, CCAM 71, 946, 949, 1055, 1056. His accounts for service in Ireland were audited in 1649, but Temple’s military career was not yet over.18Herald and Genealogist, iii. 540. In December 1648, Temple was sent to Ireland. He was reported as at Kinsale, Co. Cork on 9 December, and was soon regarded by Inchiquin to be on a mission to ‘seduce the soldiers from their duties and obedience’. Temple evidently hoped to negotiate with Inchiquin, to persuade him not to persist with his revolt against parliamentary authority, but the Irish commander refused to deal with him, and ordered him to leave Kinsale as soon as he had anchored in the harbour there.19Bodl. Carte 23, ff.. 10, 14v, 18v, 20, 22, 23, 25. In April 1653, Temple performed a fiduciary role for William Jephson in a conveyance of an estate in Hampshire to John Fiennes, Temple’s former colonel, and in July 1653, he and Jephson were provided transport to Ireland by the council of state, to begin a second period of army service there.20C54/3735/11; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 26. By October 1656, he had become an aide-de-camp to Henry Cromwell*, though possibly not with military rank.21Henry Cromwell Corresp. 185, 213, 246, 524.

The Warwickshire by-election of December 1654 was technically the consequence of the decision by William Purefoy I to sit for Coventry, where his interest was more powerful, after a double return in the election in July. Edmund Temple’s appearance in the by-election, apparently unopposed, may owe more to local competing interests than to any wider political currents. On 16 October, Samuel Andrewes, the minister of Southam, near Burton Dassett, wrote to Sir Richard Temple that news of the by-election had reached Warwickshire, and sought his advice on whether his friends should turn out in support of a candidate. Andrewes thought that it would be better that any candidacy by Thomas Roper, Viscount Baltinglass [I], Sir Richard’s old opponent, should be quashed.22HEHL, Temple mss, Parliament, box 1, Andrews to Temple, 16 Oct. 1654. Through his wife, Baltinglass laid claim to the Burton Dassett estate, and indeed was in possession of the estate at this point, referring to himself as an ‘inhabitant of Warwickshire’.23HEHL, Temple mss, Parliament, petition of Thomas Roper, Viscount Baltinglass, n.d. The appearance of a Temple, Sir Richard’s first cousin, as a candidate would have been a way to increase that family’s grip on the electoral politics of the county, and would have roused no opposition in government quarters, as the army officers in Ireland appreciated the potential of the protectorate for their interest. It may even have been through the good offices of Edmund Temple and men like William Jephson that young Sir Richard Temple secured household office with the lord protector. There is no evidence either that Edmund Temple took his seat, however, or even that he returned from Ireland to England.

By April 1657, Temple and his former commander, John Fiennes, were petitioning the council of state again, for arrears of pay still outstanding. Temple requested another grant of forfeited estates, and claimed he was owed over £1,000. In October, a council committee reported favourably on their request, and awarded them half the sums they discovered in Ireland, with a promise of a moiety of any delinquents’ estates they uncovered.24CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 329; 1657-8, pp. 134, 163. Temple was spending much of his time in Ireland, assisting Henry Cromwell, his patron. He had acquired a captaincy in Ireland by January 1659, when he reported to Cromwell the difficulties put in his way by Charles Fleetwood*, who had opposed Temple’s commission.25Henry Cromwell Corresp. 246, 336, 432, 476, 524. After the collapse of Richard Cromwell’s* protectorate in May 1659, Temple continued in military office, and was required by the restored Rump to seek Henry Cromwell’s acquiescence to the new regime. He returned to London ‘very dissatisfied’, perhaps because of Cromwell’s ambivalent response.26A.Clarke, Prelude to Restoration in Ireland (Cambridge, 1999), 46, 53, 60n. It was on his return to Ireland in July 1659 that he fell into the hands of Sir George Boothe’s* rebels at Chester. Boothe allowed him to continue to Ireland, where he was able to report to the council of army officers on the course of the rebellion.27Ludlow, Memoirs, ii. 107.

In December 1659, Temple signed a letter of loyalty to the Rump, deploring the interruptions it had suffered in 1653 and earlier that year. By this time, however, Temple had become an associate of Sir Charles Coote*, who led at first a disaffected group of army officers, but soon most of the council. Temple moved, to the disgust of Edmund Ludlowe II*, with the trend towards the majority of those loyal to the Rump by taking Carlow castle from its governor, Col. Pretty, in the interests of the council of officers.28Ludlow, Memoirs, ii. 188-9; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 114. On 26 December, Temple voted with the council of officers that Ludlowe was ‘no friend to the Parliament’.29Ludlow, Memoirs, ii. 471. Temple blockaded Ludlowe in the fort at Duncannon, but the crisis was defused early in January 1660 by messages from the Rump favouring Coote’s faction, and isolating Ludlowe. The latter was required to return to London, to his own further astonishment.30Ludlow, Memoirs, ii. 193-6, 199, 451-5; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 136-8. In January 1660, Temple also returned to England, with a list of nominations for army posts in Ireland, which was to be submitted to the Commons. He himself received the approval of General George Monck*, on the suggestion of Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), that Temple should command a regiment of dragoons. Monck’s letter of recommendation included a personal recollection of Temple’s efforts in Ireland to mobilise against John Lambert*.31Eg. 2618, f. 55; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 149, 151. His last duty in Ireland was to bring letters from the army officers there to the Speaker on 2 March 1660 assuring him of their loyalty.32Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 256.

Temple had no difficulty in retiring to private life after the restoration of the king. Indeed, his brother and fellow-officer, Purbeck, received a knighthood. Temple retired to Sulby, a former monastic estate, near Welford in Northamptonshire, where he made his will on 20 August 1664. All his children were minors at that time, suggesting that he married Eleanor Harvey after he had become an officer in the army.33PROB11/326, f. 278v. Four years after the will was made, in an incident recalling the duel he attempted to fight in 1647, Temple was involved in a tavern brawl with Sir Thomas Halford of Wistow, Leicestershire. Halford struck Temple over the head with a bottle. Temple died of his injury, and Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary on 10 March 1668 the bringing in of Temple’s assailant to Newgate prison prior to a prosecution for manslaughter.34Pepys, Diary, ix. 111; Temple, Temple Mems. 62. Temple was buried at Welford on 9 March 1668.35Herald and Genealogist, iii. 391, 540; Bridges, Northants. i. 596; Vis. Bucks. 1634 (Harl. Soc. lviii), 115-6; Nichols, Leics. iv (pt. 2), 960; Prime, Temple Fam. 46. Contacts between the Sulby Temples and the Stowe branch continued, as several of Edmund Temple’s descendants were acknowledged in the will of Sir Richard Temple*.36Stowe 840, f. 12. None of Edmund Temple’s descendants sat in Parliament.