TEMPLE, Sir Peter (1592-1653), of Stowe, Bucks. and Burton Dassett, Warws.

The origins of the Temple family lay in Oxfordshire, around Witney, but they held Stowe in Buckinghamshire as tenants during the reign of Henry VI. The first Warwickshire manor they acquired was Butlers Marston, bought in 1553 by Peter Temple. In his time the family acquired arms, and added Burton Dassett to their estates by increments in 1559 and 1576. The freehold of Stowe was acquired in 1590 by Thomas Temple†, who represented Andover in Parliament in 1589, but Burton Dassett continued to be their burial place for several generations.22'The Family of Temple', Herald and Genealogist iii. 391-4; Dugdale, Warws. i. 523; VCH Warws. v. 71; VCH Bucks. iv. 233. The Temples were successful in office and fecund. Thomas Temple was high sheriff in three counties, and purchased his baronetcy in 1611. His wife, Hester Sandys – somewhat alarmingly – ‘saw seven hundred extracted from her body’, a hyperbolic estimate of her posterity, but the family was certainly large.23HP Commons, 1558-1603; Fuller, Hist. Worthies of Eng. i. 210. Peter, born between 3 and 4pm on 2 October 1592, had four younger brothers and ten sisters, most of whom survived infancy.24Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 404; Ship Money Pprs. ix.

By the early 1630s Sir Peter was on the commission of the peace in Buckinghamshire, thus taking over some of the local role of his ageing father. But his real baptism of fire as a local official followed from his appointment as sheriff in 1634. On 20 August 1635 he received the writ to collect the county’s payments for Ship Money, set at £4,500, and he and his men had begun their work by mid-September.25Ship Money Pprs. 5-6. This presented him with a formidable challenge, not least because among those residents who declined to cooperate was John Hampden*, whose refusal to obey Temple’s demand was to be used as the basis for the famous test case. Temple may have been rather glad that a parallel case involving his uncle, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, was less high-profile. But the king’s legal victory made it no easier for Temple to collect money from the host of more obscure but equally uncooperative non-payers. Even beforehand, Temple was struggling to meet his quota and the problem of the arrears lingered on after he had ceased to be sheriff. On 3 July 1636 the privy council ordered him to assist his successor, Heneage Proby, with the collection of the outstanding arrears.26CSP Dom. 1636-7, 18; Nugent, Hampden, i. 405-6; Ship Money Pprs. 45. He was then required to attend on the king at Theobalds to explain himself in person, prompting him to lament to his mother, ‘My life is nothing but toil, and hath been for many years, to the commonwealth, and now to the king’.27Nugent, Hampden, i. 233. Conciliar pressure was maintained throughout 1636 and 1637.28Ship Money Pprs. 67-8. By late 1638 he still owed £188 1s 11d.29Ship Money Pprs. 89-90; Gordon, ‘Collection of ship-money’, 156. His surviving papers reveal his frustrations at the vagueness of the instructions he had received from the government, but contain no indications that he actually doubted the tax’s legality.30Ship Money Pprs. 7-12.

There was no doubt that the Temples were very wealthy. John Lenthall* would later recall Sir Peter as having been ‘in his lifetime accounted a person of great credit, esteem and integrity and [he] enjoyed a plentiful estate both real and personal’.31E.F. Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple: the debt settlement and estate litigation, 1653-1676’, HLQ vi. 256. During the early decades of the century their annual income was probably about £2,600.32Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 421-3. But there were many siblings to provide for and the family borrowed widely and unwisely. By 1627 the combined debts of Sir Peter and his father may well have totalled £14,000.33Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 430. Both had probably been spending beyond their means. Sir Thomas thus had no real option but to sell off capital assets in the form of parts of their estates.34Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 430-2. Sir Peter married his second wife, Christian Leveson, in 1630 mainly for her money, expecting that her substantial inheritance from her late father, Sir John Leveson†, would ease their financial difficulties.35Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 416. When Sir Thomas Temple died in 1637, he left the family estates much diminished and seriously encumbered. This was a legacy of debt from which Sir Peter never managed to escape and which would come to dominate his time in Parliament. As early as 1638 he was probably mortgaging the estates at Stowe.36Coventry Docquets, 723. After agreeing to take over some of the lands of his cousin, Sir Alexander Denton*, in return for becoming responsible for Denton’s debts, Sir Peter discovered that the lands were nowhere near enough to cover those payments, meaning that there was now another group of creditors pursuing him.37CCC 2878. In 1639 he began pawning the family plate.38Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 433.

The proximity of Stowe to the town of Buckingham ensured that the Temples had one of the most powerful electoral interests in that constituency. Consequently on 6 March 1640 the corporation chose Sir Peter and Denton as their two MPs for the Short Parliament.39C219/42, pt. 1, f. 68. The one piece of business considered by the Parliament in which Temple can be assumed to have taken an interest was a personal one. Ten years earlier Sir Peter had discussed with Thomas Roper, 1st Viscount Baltinglass [I], the possibility of marrying Anne, his only child from his first marriage, to Baltinglass’s heir, also Thomas Roper. After Baltinglass had promised them a substantial settlement, the young couple had married without Temple’s permission, only to find that Baltinglass was unwilling to give them the money he had promised. Temple understandably refused to provide for them. The complication was that when he had married Anne’s late mother, Anne Throckmorton, the settlement had stipulated that two-thirds of Burton Dassett should be the portion of any heir produced by the marriage.40VCH Warws. v. 71. By 1640 his unwanted son-in-law, now 2nd Viscount Baltinglass, was suing Temple in chancery seeking to obtain maintenance for his wife.41Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 409-10. But, as an MP, Temple now enjoyed immunity against such legal actions for the duration of the Parliament. On 29 April, probably at Temple’s request, the Commons ordered that this principle was to be enforced in Temple’s favour, with the result that the case was halted for the time being.42CJ ii. 15b; Aston’s Diary, 85.

This experience presumably made Temple all the keener to stand again for Parliament later that year. The Buckingham corporation once more proved cooperative and re-elected him for the Long Parliament. On returning to Westminster, Temple seems initially to have kept a relatively low profile. His sole committee appointment was to the committee to examine misdemeanours in the collection of coat and conduct money (14 Dec. 1640).43CJ ii. 50b. In March 1641 he joined with other MPs in offering security for the loan of £100,000 from the City of London and on 3 May he took the Protestation.44Procs. LP ii. 654, 655; CJ ii. 133a.

When he emerged into the parliamentary limelight, it was once again as a result of the Baltinglass case. On 7 July 1641 Baltinglass applied to the Commons for permission for Temple’s immunity to be lifted. Temple was given just two days in which to produce a reply.45Procs. LP v. 534; CJ ii. 201a. On 9 July Viscount Falkland (Lucius Cary*), as a supporter of Baltinglass, raised the matter again, but after a ‘long debate’ on the general principles of parliamentary privilege, the Commons decided that Temple should be allowed to retain his immunity until such a time as he agreed to waive it.46Procs. LP v. 576, 577; CJ ii. 204a. Temple also faced separate complaints from some of his neighbours. In 1637 he had sought to enclose lands at Stowe in order to extend his deer park. Some of the locals had objected and in 1640 he had brought a case in chancery against their leader, Abel Dayrell. Individuals on both sides of the dispute were physically threatened. Unable to sue Temple in the courts, Dayrell and his friends petitioned Parliament in early 1642.47D.C. Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence before the English Civil War (Cambridge, 2008), 41-5. Temple may have been equally successful in blocking this, as the petition seems never to have been heard.

In January 1642, following the king’s abortive attempt to arrest the Five Members, Temple was included on the joint committee with the Lords appointed to reassure the corporation of London of the strength of Parliament’s cause for complaint.48CJ ii. 925a. By June 1642 the Commons noted that he seemed to have ceased attending, but he was quick to convince them that this was not an indication of royalist sympathies.49CJ ii. 628a; PJ iii. 88. He soon emerged as one of Parliament’s leading supporters in Buckinghamshire. As the senior baronet, his name headed the list of Buckinghamshire gentlemen who assembled at Aylesbury to set up the pro-parliamentarian county committee.50Nugent, Hampden, ii. 458. On 25 November he was ordered to travel to Buckinghamshire to assist in its defence and the following month he was included on the committee for associating the midland counties.51CJ ii. 863b, 869a; A. and O; Add. 18777, f. 79. His wife evidently shared his views, for she allegedly expressed regret that her stepfather, Thomas Savile, 2nd Baron Savile, had sided with the king.52J.J. Cartwright, ‘Pprs. relating to the delinquency of Ld. Savile 1642-1646’, Camden Misc. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxxi), 1. Savile denied this and responded by asking her in late 1642 to contact Saye and Sir Philip Stapilton* to reassure them of his good intentions towards Parliament.53Cartwright, ‘Delinquency of Ld. Savile’, 5.

At Westminster Temple was not allowed to forget his dispute with his eldest daughter and her husband. In October 1642 Baltinglass attempted to revive his complaint about Temple’s continuing parliamentary immunity. As a substantial landowner in Ireland, the viscount had lost heavily from the Irish rebellion, making him all the more determined to pursue his father-in-law, but in this critical political and military moment, the House soon lost interest.54CJ ii. 800a, 818a. The Baltinglasses raised the issue again in June 1643, when Lady Baltinglass’s petition resulted in an order instructing Temple to provide a one-off payment to her for her maintenance.55CJ iii. 128b, 148b. Baltinglass presented another petition in May 1645.56CJ iv. 132b, 134a.

In the meantime, the war had rendered Temple’s financial position even more precarious. Early on some of his Warwickshire lands were plundered by royalist cavalry.57Add. 18777, f. 42. But those in Buckinghamshire, close to the war zone along the Oxfordshire border, suffered even more. In 1646 he defaulted on his poll tax, with the collectors reporting that his lands at Stowe had been laid waste when they had been occupied by royalist forces.58SP28/151: answer of Stowe, 30 Sept. 1646. Consequently, he regularly supported the demands that the garrisons at Aylesbury and Newport Pagnell be strengthened.59CJ iii. 295a, 306a, 311, 452b. In October 1644 he lobbied Saye for more arms for the soldiers of his nephew, Captain Henry Andrewes, and he later tried to use his influence to get Andrewes promoted.60Luke Letter Bks. 213, 214, 375, 481. He may also have gained for himself a reputation as one of the more formidable members of the county committee – in 1645 his cousin, William Denton, told Sir Ralph Verney*, ‘I fear both armies cannot make Sir P[eter] T[emple] either lead or drive, and I dread him more than all the rest’.61Verney MSS, W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 18 Dec. 1645 (M636/6).

Temple may or may not have been involved in 1645 in the various intrigues of the 1st earl of Sussex, as Lady Temple’s stepfather had now become. In January of that year Sussex was arrested on the orders of the king on suspicion of being in contact with the parliamentarians. In answer to an accusation that he had contacted his stepdaughter, the earl maintained that there had been no communication between himself and either of the Temples since he had joined the king to Oxford.62Cartwright, ‘Delinquency of Ld. Savile’, 18. Their kinship with Sussex, a political loose cannon increasingly distrusted by both sides, threatened to embarrass Sir Peter and Lady Temple a second time later that year. The allegations and counter-allegations made by and against Sussex about secret parliamentarian contacts with the royalist court threatened both the Independent and Presbyterian factions at Westminster in June 1645. One of the potentially sensational allegations made by Sussex was that he had a letter proving that Denzil Holles* and Bulstrode Whitelocke* had been negotiating behind the backs of the other parliamentarian commissioners at Uxbridge earlier that year. Initially it was claimed that Lady Temple had seen the letter, although the significance of this diminished as soon as Sussex produced the actual document.63Harl. 166, f. 219. It is clear, however, that Sussex had been in contact with her since returning from Oxford that spring and it was probably not a coincidence that it should have been Temple’s uncle, Lord Saye, who had then seen Sussex’s return as a chance to outmanoeuvre his Presbyterian opponents.

Temple’s attendance in the Commons seems still to have been intermittent, although sparse Journal entries may be misleading. For example, he received only one appointment in the House during the spring of 1644 but attended four meetings of the Committee for Sequestrations.64SP20/1, ff. 128, 130v, 131, 132; CJ iii. 452b. His inclusion on the committee created in April 1646 to investigate the attempted arrest of the elector palatine is rare evidence for his parliamentary activity in this period.65CJ iv. 500b. It is unclear whether it was Sir Peter or his kinsman Peter Temple* who was among MPs who sought the army’s protection during the Presbyterian coup at Westminster of late July 1647.66LJ ix. 385b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755. What is certain is that Sir Peter was listed as being absent on 9 October 1647.67CJ v. 330a. His nomination to the committee to consider the arrears of the reduced officers in August 1648 might indicate that he was sympathetic towards the concerns of the army, but the evidence is too thin to be sure. The fact that he was named in January 1649 as one of the judges to try the king does suggest that he was seen as a rather radical figure, but he then declined to take part in the trial.68A. and O. In contrast, Peter Temple (with whom he has often been confused) did sit.

Temple was re-admitted to the Commons on 23 July 1649.69CJ vi. 268a. However, the motivation for this may have been personal rather than a political acceptance of the legality of the Rump. In 1647 Temple had publicly acknowledged his status as a debtor. Those debts had then stood at £20,400. In April 1648 he had demonstrated his good faith to his creditors by giving the earl of Sussex an indenture by which he conveyed all his estates to them, which Sussex would have been able to invoke had the negotiations with the creditors broken down. Both sides now recognised that they would require a private act of Parliament to underwrite any deal.70Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 434; Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple: the debt settlement’, 257-8. For that reason, Temple had already petitioned the Rump in April 1649 requesting a bill for that purpose and the creditors had submitted their counter-petition in May.71CJ vi. 193a, 219a. Temple must have been aware that resuming his seat in Parliament would strengthen his position. Apart from a single committee appointment connected with the militia bill in May 1650, he concentrated his attentions in Parliament solely on his own finances.72CJ vi. 417a. He was able to block moves to pass a bill that would have forced him to sell all his lands.73Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 434-5. Instead he sought the passage of a bill to appoint trustees to take over the management of those lands. This was read for the first time on 21 August 1651, but progress was so slow that the bill was still in legislative limbo when the Rump was dissolved in April 1653.74CJ vi. 420a, 425b; vii. 4b, 5a, 108b, 220b, 229b.

It did not help Temple that in January 1652 a Hackney vintner, James Bastian, came forward to make serious accusations against him. Bastian claimed to recall that in April 1651 Temple had remarked that he ‘hoped to see him [Charles Stuart] in England ere long’, that he would ‘spend half of his estate to set him in his throne again’, that he refused to sit in Parliament because ‘he scorned to sit amongst such persons terming them rogues, and such vile language, and saying that they had undone England and Ireland, and now would undo Scotland’ and that Parliament had ‘murdered the late king’.75CJ vii. 76a. Bastian’s claims may actually have been a ploy by some of the creditors to weaken Temple’s position, but the latter denied the accusations and the Commons investigation seems to have got nowhere.76CJ vii. 79b-80a, 108b. In January 1653 Temple did manage sell some of his lands; Sir John Wittewronge* paid £400 for his manor at Stantonbury.77Herts. RO, DE/Lw/E44; VCH Bucks. iv. 464.

With the Rump dissolved, Temple and the creditors, with Sussex as intermediary, continued negotiating in the hope of reaching a private agreement. By August 1653 the outlines of a deal were in place. Temple was willing to hand over the estates to trustees, who would repay the creditors, but those repayments would be limited only to the principal of the debts. Provision would also be made for his wife and for his young son and heir, Richard*. But Sir Peter never signed up to it. In late August he fell ill with a fever at Purley. His physician cousin, William Denton, attended him on what proved to be his deathbed. He died on 12 September.78Gay, ‘Temples of Stowe and their debts’, 436-7; Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple: the debt settlement’, 259-60.

Just when it had seemed that a solution to the family’s problems might be in sight, Sir Peter’s death compounded them. Richard was still a minor and thus unable to enter into a similar agreement. Moreover, most of the lands were entailed, removing any obligation on the heir to pay Sir Peter’s debts. The following month the Nominated Parliament was asked to amend the bill for the relief of creditors so that Sir Peter would be deemed to have been bankrupt since 3 November 1640, the day on which the Long Parliament had opened. This proposal was rejected, however.79CJ vii. 330b. It was not until 29 November 1654, after another attempt to obtain a private act had again been wrecked by a dissolution and after the protectoral council had ordered the court of common bench (common pleas) to allow the teenage heir to act, that Sir Richard was able to conclude the vital agreement with the creditors.80Gay, ‘Sir Richard Temple: the debt settlement’, 264. By then he was MP for Warwickshire.