TEMPLE, Peter (1599-1663), of Temple Hall, Sibson, Leics.

The Temples claimed descent from the Saxon earls of Mercia and had resided at Temple Hall, 14 miles east of Leicester, since the twelfth century or earlier, making them one of the county’s oldest gentry families.28Nichols, Leics. iv. 958-9; T. Prime, Some Acct. of the Temple Fam. 3. Temple’s father anticipated that his third son, the future MP, would enter the mercantile profession, and it was later reported that Temple had indeed been apprenticed to a linen-draper of Friday Street, London – the place of residence of his future father-in-law John Gearing, a wealthy London grocer.29PROB11/127, f. 530; Winstanley, Loyall Martyrology, 141. Yet by late 1619, when he was 20 years old, Temple had still not been bound as an apprentice; and the deaths in rapid succession of his father, his elder brothers Paul and Jonathan and of his young nephew (Paul’s son), would have obviated any necessity for him to enter or pursue a career in trade. It was as master of Temple Hall rather than as an apprentice draper that he married Gearing’s daughter in 1624.30Farnham, Leics. Medieval Village Notes, iv. 91-3; Leics. RO, Probate 1620/59.

The lengthy and intensely godly preface to his father’s will suggests that Temple was the scion of a family with puritan leanings, and this may help to explain his decision to side with Parliament after the outbreak of civil war.31PROB11/127, f. 529. By early 1643, he was an active member of the Leicestershire county committee, signing warrants with Thomas Lord Grey of Groby* and apparently serving under him as a captain in the county’s parliamentarian forces and as governor of Coleorton.32SP28/236, pt. 3, unfol.; An Examination of a Printed Pamphlet, 5; Winstanley, Loyall Martyrology, 141-2; Nichols, Leics. iii. app. iv. 32. Like Henry Smyth* and William Stanley*, he was aligned with Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and his adherents on the Leicestershire county committee – a group opposed by Grey of Groby, Thomas Beaumont*, Thomas Pochin* and their allies.33Supra, ‘Thomas Beaumont’; ‘Thomas Lord Grey of Groby’; ‘Sir Arthur Heslirige’; ‘Thomas Pochin’; ‘Henry Smyth’; ‘William Stanley’; SP16/501/56, pp. 96-7; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 134; An Examination Examined (1645), 16 (E.303.13). After the royalist sacking of Leicester late in May 1645, a member of Grey of Groby’s group accused Temple of having repeatedly deserted the county in times of danger – an allegation dismissed by Temple and his allies as ‘frivolous and not worth the answering’.34An Examination of a Printed Pamphlet, 5; An Examination Examined, 13.

Returned as a ‘recruiter’ for Leicester on 17 November 1645, Temple probably owed his election to his standing on the county committee and to the influence of Hesilrige, who seems to have been present in the town on election day.35Bodl. Rawl. D.116, p. 19; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 338. Temple’s activities and appointments at Westminster are not easy to distinguish from those of his kinsman and fellow recruiter Captain James Temple – the clerk of the Commons apparently referring to both men as ‘Captain’ or ‘Mr Temple’. Disentangling their parliamentary careers becomes easier from the spring of 1647, when James began to be styled ‘Colonel Temple’.36CJ v. 132b, 148b, 311b, 572a. But despite the problems involved in identifying Temple at Westminster, it is clear that he did not figure prominently in the House before the establishment of the Rump. During the first three years or so of his parliamentary career he was named to somewhere between one and eight committees – none of which were of any great significance.37CJ iv. 376a, 727a; v. 9b, 15a, 28b, 366b, 367a, 689a. Although he was granted leave of absence on 24 March 1647, it may have been Temple rather than another kinsman, Sir Peter Temple, who signed the 4 August ‘engagement’ of those Parliament-men – predominantly Independents – who had taken refuge with the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster of 26 July.38CJ v. 122a; LJ ix. 385b. Declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October, Temple was very probably in Leicestershire when he was appointed a commissioner by the House in December to collect the county’s assessment quota.39CJ v. 330a, 400b.

Temple and Grey of Groby were instrumental in mobilising Leicestershire for Parliament during the second civil war, for which they and Francis Hacker* were appointed colonels in the county’s militia forces.40CJ v. 620b; HMC Portland, i. 468. Temple may have returned to Westminster by 28 August 1648, when he was probably the ‘Mr Temple’ named to a committee set up that day – headed by Grey of Groby and dominated by Independent Members from the midland counties – to interrogate James, 1st duke of Hamilton and other captured Scottish Engagers concerning the identity of their English abettors.41CJ v. 689a. But he seems to have absented himself thereafter, or kept a very low profile in the House, until after Pride’s Purge. His first known appearance in the Rump was on 20 December, when he was among the first group of Commons-men to enter their dissents to the 5 December vote that the king’s answers at Newport were sufficient grounds for a settlement.42[C. Walker], Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 48 (E.570.4). On 6 January 1649, he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers*, of which he was an active member – further evidence that he was a man of godly convictions.43SP22/2B, passim; CJ vi. 112b. But his new rank of colonel again makes it difficult to distinguish his appointments after Pride’s Purge from those of his fellow Rumper Colonel James Temple. At most, however, Temple was named to only four, relatively minor, ad hoc committees in the weeks between Pride’s Purge and the regicide.44CJ vi. 102a, 103a, 103b, 112b. On the other hand, he was one of the most conscientious members of the high court of justice, attending all but two of the 18 meetings of the trial commission and all four sessions of the trial itself.45Muddiman, Trial, 76, 89, 96, 105, 195, 227; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 728. Both he and James Temple were among the king’s judges who signed the death warrant on 29 January.46Muddiman, Trial, 228.

Temple was favoured with appointment in 1649 and 1652 to a number of the major executive committees at Westminster, including the Committee of Navy and Customs*, the Committee for the Army* and the committee for regulating the universities. As an active member of the first and last of these committees he was involved in managing both the republic’s military and ecclesiastical affairs.47CJ vi. 112b, 219b, 231a, 577b; A. and O.; Add. 22546, f. 69; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. xxiii. He was also named to somewhere between 17 and 42 ad hoc committees in the Rump – the true tally being obscured by the clerk’s tendency to refer simply to ‘Colonel Temple’, without distinguishing between Peter and James. The majority of Temple’s 17 confirmed committee nominations fell in the year following Pride’s Purge.48CJ vi. 103a, 103b, 131b, 134a, 146b, 158a, 161b, 325b, 327a, 330b, 423b, 436b, 437a, 577b; vii. 55b, 134a, 139a. Perhaps his most revealing appointments were to the committees for abolishing kingship (7 Mar. 1649) and to suppress the Ranters (14 June 1650).49CJ vi. 158a, 423b. One of the Temples was named to committees for the release of poor prisoners (31 Jan. 1649); for taking Members’ dissents (1 Feb.); for recompensing Henry Marten* (23 June); on a bill for an Act of Oblivion (5 July); for advancing the Protestant religion in Ireland (30 Nov.); and for propagating the gospel in Wales (29 Jan. 1650).50CJ vi. 127a, 241b, 250b, 327b, 352a; [W. Prynne*], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 25 (E.1013.22). In July 1649, Temple secured a Commons’ order for a grant of £1,500 out of the Leicestershire sequestrations revenue to meet arrears and losses he had sustained during the war – of which he was paid at least £1,200.51CJ vi. 267a; CCC, 166.

Temple remained active in local government under the Rump, working with Thomas Beaumont in October 1649 in prosecuting and imprisoning the Leveller and Baptist preacher Samuel Oates.52Bodl. Rawl. D.116, pp. 139-41; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 385-6. In February 1650, William Stanley* and other leading members of Leicester corporation requested his advice on how to proceed against various radical publications which they thought likely to encourage ‘atheism and profaneness’.53Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 386-7. That December the council of state ordered Temple to repair to Leicestershire to help preserve the county in due obedience to Parliament.54CSP Dom. 1650, p. 468. With his fellow Rumper and associate of Grey of Groby’s, Thomas Waite, he testified in the Committee for Plundered Ministers early in 1651 against the anti-Trinitarian controversialist John Fry*.55CJ vi. 537a. Temple’s last appointment in the Rump was either in June or September 1652, after which he made no further recorded impression on the House’s proceedings before its dissolution in April 1653.56CJ vii. 139a, 182b.

Although Temple continued to receive appointments to Leicestershire county commissions after 1653 and was named as an ejector in 1654, he does not appear to have played a prominent role in local government under the protectorate. He returned to the national political stage, as did Colonel James Temple, with the restoration of the Rump in May 1659, receiving appointment to somewhere between 10 and 18 – mostly relatively minor – committees.57CJ vii. 663a, 664a, 668a, 689b, 691b, 702a, 705a, 741b, 748b, 751a. On 15 July, he reported to the House the names of the new militia commissioners for Leicestershire.58CJ vii. 719b. Granted leave of absence on 10 September, he does not appear to have returned to the House before it was dissolved again in mid-October.59CJ vii. 777a. He was named to a further five or six committees after the Rump was restored again late in December 1659, including those for imposing qualifications upon new MPs and to nominate county magistrates. His last appointment in the Rump was on 15 February 1660 – six days before the Members secluded at Pride’s Purge were allowed to resume their seats.60CJ vii. 800a, 811a, 818b, 821a, 822a, 843b.

At the Restoration, Temple turned himself in to the authorities in accordance with the royal proclamation for the surrender of the regicides on pain of exemption from pardon or indemnity.61CJ viii. 63b. Exempted from the Bill of Pardon, he was among the group of regicides tried at the Old Bailey on 16 October 1660 for high treason.62CJ viii. 61a. He offered very little in his own defence and was duly convicted.63State Trials v. 1217, 1223. He was one of 18 regicides who were brought from the Tower to the Commons on 25 November 1661 and ‘humbly craved the benefit’ of the 1660 royal proclamation ‘and the mercy of this House and their mediation to his Majesty’.64CJ viii. 319a. After the Commons had then passed a bill for executing the 18 men, they were brought before the Lords on 7 February 1662 to plead for their lives again. In the event, the Lords rejected the bill and thus spared the 18 men’s lives.65LJ xi. 380b.

Temple died in the Tower of dropsy on 20 December 1663.66CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 383. His date and place of burial are not known. His estates were confiscated by Charles II, and his branch of the Temples faded into obscurity.