TEMPLE, Sir Richard (1634-97), of Stowe, Bucks. and Burton Dassett, Warws.

Richard Temple’s minority was clouded by the dispute between his father and the Roper family, whose claim on the Temple estates persisted for over 40 years.23VCH Warws. v. 71; Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their Debts’, 409-36. By 1647, owing £20,400, Sir Peter was overwhelmed by the lawsuits of his creditors, and was forced to devise a number of agreements with the aim of protecting his family from complete ruin.24Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their Debts’, 434-5; Gay: ‘Sir Richard Temple: the Debt Settlement’, 257-8. In one of these, dated 4 March 1649, trustees for the Temples were to pay over £17,000 of principal debt, and the agreement was to be enshrined in an act of Parliament. The trustees were to be led by the 1st earl of Sussex (Thomas Savile†), at best a lukewarm parliamentarian. In its original manifestation, this settlement and bill worked harshly against the interests of Richard Temple, by cutting off the entail on the estates.25Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple: the Debt Settlement’, 258. From 1649, as part of a strategy of self-protection, the Temples themselves resorted to parliamentary legislation, by calling for an act to enable Richard to levy fines and make recoveries while under age.26CJ vi. 193a, 219a. On 6 and 18 June 1650, it was ordered that the Temples’ bill be read in the House, but only on 20 August 1651 was it read twice and referred to a committee including William Purefoy I*. Care was taken to acknowledge the interest of Temple’s sister, Lady Baltinglass (Anne Roper), and so the bill was never intended only to protect the Temples.27CJ vi. 420a, 425b; vii. 4b, 5a. Altogether, three agreements with creditors, dated 4 March and 13 July 1649, and 15 August 1653, were constructed, but none seems to have been concluded before the death of Sir Peter Temple on 12 September 1653, and the bill also remained incomplete.28CJ vii. 108b, 220b, 229b. A story originating from the Baltinglass camp alleged that his father’s deathbed advice to Richard was

Dick, your sister is poor and sickly, if you do but enter upon her estate, the profits will maintain the suit; you may soon weary her out, or if she dies before the end of it, you are next heir.29CP i. 398.

It seems that Temple’s guardian after his father’s death was the politically flexible and urbane physician, William Denton, a kinsman.30To the High Court of Parliament...The Humble Petition of John Wagstaff (1655) (669 f. 19.61); Oxford DNB, ‘William Denton’. Even before Sir Peter died, Richard Temple had been drawn into the family’s enduring financial crisis, and wrote to a creditor’s lawyer in June 1653, to reject overtures for an extension of the time the creditors would have access to the estates by the terms of the latest projected settlement.31Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple and the Debt Settlement’, 257-8, 259 When Richard succeeded to his father’s estates, his debts and his baronetcy, his petitions and those of his creditors, were referred to the committee for prisons and prisoners of the Nominated Assembly.32CJ vii. 330a, 333a. In a brief to this committee, Richard’s mother, Lady Christian Temple, shared her perspective that she might have been able to persuade Richard to come to an agreement if a bill had passed the House quickly in 1649, but after he had attained the age of 14 she felt he had to make up his own mind when he came into full possession of the facts.33Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple and the Debt Settlement’, 261. Richard himself testified in a chancery suit that his mother had been imprisoned in upper bench as a result of a lawsuit between Sir Peter and his brother-in-law, who had used ‘all the violent courses imaginable’ against Richard’s parents.34Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple and the Debt Settlement’, 263-4.

There was evidently sympathy in the parliamentary committee for the plight of the family, and on 2 November 1653, a report recommended that Richard should be given by the court of common bench (formerly common pleas) what his family had sought for several years: permission to be considered of age, so that he could levy fines and suffer recoveries on his own estate. In the dying weeks of the Nominated Assembly, the bill recommended by the committee to enshrine this principle did not appear, so on 25 April 1654, the council of state ordered the judges of common bench to pronounce Temple to be of majority age for legal purposes: specifically to be able to settle the estates on trustees for a period of 11 years.35CJ vii. 344b; HEHL, ‘Temple mss, Parliament, report of Col. Humphrey. Mackworth, 25 Apr. 1654; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 116; Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple and the Debt Settlement’, 263-4. It was this legal technicality that paved the way for Sir Richard Temple’s candidature for a seat in the first protectorate Parliament. He had been briefly a magistrate from the age of 18, although he had never been a tax or militia commissioner. His decision to stand in the election for Warwickshire on 12 July 1654 may well have been prompted by a desire to escape his creditors, for the urgency of Temple’s financial problems did not diminish as a result of his succession to his estate. Sir Richard inherited £2,000 of his father’s debts beyond those debts secured by the settlement, under which he was to receive only an allowance of £600 a year, from properties bringing in £2-3,000 annually. His borrowings on bonds alone between 1653 and 1656 amounted to £4,500.36CSP Dom. 1654, p. 58; Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple and the Debt Settlement’, 265-6, 273.

On 16 August 1654, before Temple had taken his seat, the council considered a petition of 40 Warwickshire freeholders which declared his election invalid because he was under age, and which demanded a new writ be issued.37CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 306-7. Although there is no record of it in the Journal, a further petition from Thomas Roper, Viscount Baltinglass [I], Temple’s brother-in-law and ‘inhabitant of the county of Warwickshire’, alleged that Temple had not been given permission to sit, and that a promise of a new writ had been given, presumably by the council before Parliament assembled on 3 September. Because no new writ had yet appeared, Baltinglass complained against Temple’s sitting. He made explicit the link between Temple’s apparent freedom to sit and the long-running family dispute: Baltinglass feared Temple’s admittance to the House ‘may be prejudicial to him in regard of a suit that he has being for some £1,000 p.a. to be heard the last of this present month’.38HEHL, Temple mss, Parliament, petition of Baltinglass, n.d.

For his part, Temple seems to have stayed away from the House in the first month of its sitting, as no mention of him can be found in the Journal. By 2 October, however, he was installed in lodgings at Whitehall, providing his family with news of parliamentary proceedings. Three days later, a supporter from Warwickshire suggested to Temple that he might perform a ‘courtesy’ by scrutinizing the suggestions for commissioners under a bill for ministers – perhaps a revision of the act against scandalous ministers – and by 16 October he had certainly achieved admission to the House. His correspondent, Samuel Andrewes, minister of Southam, near Burton Dassett, conveyed the congratulations of Temple’s friends and recalled their earlier dejection, implying that Temple had in fact at some point been excluded. By the 6th Temple had been active enough in Parliament to have inserted Andrewes’s name as a local commissioner in a bill.39HEHL, Temple mss, Parliament, ‘Affectionate sister’ to Temple, 2 Oct. 1654; William Hart to Temple, 5 Oct. 1654; Samuel Andrewes to Temple, 16 Oct. 1654; E339/1, list of Warwickshire ministers. On 16 October, Temple was just under 20 years and seven months of age.

In November and December 1654, he was named to four committees, always in the company of an older and perhaps wiser colleague or relative. With William Purefoy I, he considered the petition of the royalist Sir John Stawell* (3 Nov.). He sat with Robert Beake on a committee to find ways to perfect public accounts (22 Nov.), and was named with his cousin, Sir Thomas Rous, to consider the bill for abolishing purveyance. The same day (22 Dec.), the petitions of Oxford and Cambridge universities for the promotion of civil law were referred to a committee with four Warwickshire and Coventry Members included in it.40CJ vii. 381a, 387b, 407b. In January 1655, George Thomason bought in London a copy of a further petition against Temple from Warwickshire. This complaint by John Wagstaff, that Temple’s continued presence in the House would jeopardise his chances of suing him successfully for a debt of £1,000, was couched in virtually identical terms to the earlier petition of Baltinglass.41To the High Court of Parliament ... The Humble Petition of John Wagstaff (1655, 669 f. 19.61). There is no evidence of Temple’s suspension from the House, but neither is there any that he attended the House after 22 December.

This was by no means the end of Temple’s parliamentary career. He stood in the 1656 election, again for Warwickshire, but this time unsuccessfully. Four seats were available, and he polled 340 votes, coming fifth with 232 fewer votes than his nearest successful rival, Joseph Hawkesworth*. Even so, he was nearly 200 votes ahead of the Coventrian Richard Hopkins and the army candidate, Richard Creed.42HEHL, Temple mss, STT Elections Box 1 (1), poll book, 1656. He seems to have played no role in local government in Warwickshire beyond his place on the bench of magistrates, but was apparently favoured with office in the household of the lord protector, as a server or carver at table. He was reported to be seeking court office in March 1655, having decided that it was more promising path than seeking his fortune in the West Indies. As his guardian, Denton, wrote, ‘Sir Richard Temple’s purport of going for gold is 1,000 times than holding of a trencher, but I doubt he loves sleeping in a whole skin too well to go that journey’.43Mems. of the Verney Fam. ii. 8. By March 1656, Temple’s closeness to government officials was being assumed, and by then he may well have achieved his goal of household office in the protector’s court.44Mems. of the Verney Fam. ii. 34. It is unclear whether this predated his candidature for the second protectorate Parliament, and it hard to attribute any motive to his attendance at the trials of two royalist plotters in June 1658.45HMC 5th Rep. 173. Like Denton, he settled into fashionable London life, attending the services of the episcopalian divine Peter Gunning at Exeter House, where the rites of the Book of Common Prayer, though officially prescribed, were read.46Davies, ‘Political Career of Sir Richard Temple’, 82-3.

Temple was returned again to the 1659 Parliament, this time on his own interest, presumably, for Buckingham. In this assembly, if his service in the Cromwellian household still continued, Temple was less than helpful to the new lord protector, Richard Cromwell*. He spoke out in cases of irregularities by Lewis Audley, Edmund Jones and Robert Danvers alias Villiers. All three were accused of breach of privilege or delinquency. Temple demanded that Audley should be sent to the Tower as condign punishment, but in the other two cases seemed to consider that inconsistencies in dealing with the ‘delinquents’ demanded that their cases be laid aside.47Burton’s Diary, iii. 41, 252. In the case of the Worcester crypto-royalist, Thomas Street*, Temple sought a ‘great debate’, and argued for the power of the privileges committee.48Burton’s Diary, iii. 253. Taken as a whole, these interventions suggest that at this stage, Temple was tender of the privileges of the House, and thus perhaps more sympathetic to the commonwealthsmen than to the government. On 14 February, Temple was a teller in one of a series of divisions on a bill to confirm the protector’s title. The republicans lost on a vote to include the word ‘recognize’ in the bill, then won one on including the word ‘undoubted’. By this time late in the afternoon, the question that candles be brought in was supported by Temple and Sir Arthur Annesley, suggesting that on this issue at least, Temple was associating with those who wanted the protectorate to continue.49CJ vii. 603b.

On the 18th, it was his preference that the Other House, rather than the even more dangerous topics of the militia and the Irish and Scots MPs, should be discussed, and he was interested in pursuing the topic of qualifications of members of the second chamber. The subject was debated fully on 4 and 5 March, and before then, Temple had been the subject of criticism by republicans who objected to his shouted objections to a Speaker’s ruling.50Burton’s Diary, iv. 4. The republicans made capital from the issue of whether members of the Other House sat by virtue of the Humble Petition and Advice, or by the traditional constitution. This was evidently not what Temple had in mind, and he expressed his fear of a dismantling of the protectorate. When the debate turned to the topic that interested him, that of qualifications, he argued that old peers, their estates diminished and weakened, were ideal material for the second chamber. They were independent of the protector financially, but should serve him to advance their interest. He moved that the old peers, thus reduced from their pre-civil war standing, were as potentially useful as the Cromwellian ‘lords’, and moved for the repeal of the act of 1649 abolishing the House of Lords. He seems to have come to this position by way of Harringtonian ideas of ‘balance’.51Burton’s Diary, iv. 16, 40-1.

The often cryptic record of the parliamentary diary of Thomas Burton* suggests that it was this debate that marked Temple as a sceptic towards, if not an outright opponent of, Richard Cromwell’s regime. From 8 March, Temple voiced opposition to the presence of Irish and Scots Members, who provided the lord protector with a bloc of support in the House. He questioned their right to sit, called for their withdrawal, and expressed dissatisfaction with the union with the Scots, at first assumed, then legislated for, by the protectorate. Even so, it is hard to see in Temple’s series of negative interjections a consistent approach, let alone consistent support for the republicans. When on 21 March, Sir Arthur Hesilrige sought legislative sanction against the Scots presence, Temple called for a bill to confirm their rights. It is possible, to judge from other interventions he made on matters of parliamentary procedure, he thought of himself at the age of 25 as something of an expert.52Burton’s Diary, iv. 87, 96, 106, 132, 216-8, 250, 282. That summer, he seems to have associated himself with the royalist rising of Sir George Boothe*, claiming later that he had raised 200 horse for the cause.53Davies, ‘Political Career’, 82.

The republicans were deeply suspicious of Temple, as were the military. In January 1660, when the Buckinghamshire gentlemen petitioned George Monck* for a free Parliament, an officer impugned Temple’s motives, accusing him of only seeking office again in the household of another ‘single person’: the king. In February, the Rump, restored for the second time, sent for him to be arrested, and he was detained until the secluded Members were re-admitted.54CJ vii. 836a. On 5 May, Edmund Ludlowe II* rebuffed Temple when he asked the republican to nominate him as a commissioner to attend Charles II.55HMC Popham, 208; Ludlow, Voyce from the Watch Tower, 122. Other enemies, the Baltinglass family, saw an opportunity to embarrass Temple. They re-opened proceedings to recover Burton Dassett from him, and claimed that Temple had orchestrated a campaign against them by the tenants ‘together with Oliver Cromwell’s interest, the said Sir Richard serving him with a trencher and procuring addresses to him’.56The Case betwixt the Lord and Lady Baltinglasse, and Sir Richard Temple (1660).

Temple brushed off these attacks with ease, to become an important Restoration politician. He never sat again for Warwickshire, but represented Buckingham in eight Parliaments after 1660.57HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Sir Richard Temple’. He spoke out against the role of religion in provoking all the ‘late troubles’, and denounced stiff-necked Presbyterian clergy.58Stowe 304, f. 180. In June 1663, Temple promoted a blatant offer of his to manage the House of Commons in the king’s interest. The record suggests that in order to further his prospects of success, he attempted a retrospective re-working of his past to burnish evidence of his royalism, and to erase most traces of his loyalty to the protectorate. He claimed then, for example, to have been excluded by the government from two Cromwellian Parliaments, where the evidence suggests only one, and that only a temporary ban. He alleged also that ‘he made the exception against the Scotch and Irish Members which was [Richard Cromwell’s] ruin’; but that was to impose a consistency on his own utterances that seems to have been lacking at the time.59Pepys, Diary, iv. 191-2; Davies, ‘Political Career’, 82-3. Temple died in May 1697, and was buried at Stowe.