TEMPLE, James (1606-aft. 1673), of Chadwell, Essex, and later of Etchingham and Michelgrove, Suss.

This MP’s father, Sir Alexander Temple†, was a younger brother of Sir Thomas Temple† of Stowe, and belonged to one of the most ancient and well-connected gentry families in Caroline England. Sir Alexander’s brothers-in-law included Sir Nicholas Parker† and William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele; Sir John Temple* was a first cousin, once removed.29Prime, Temple Family, 16, 24. Until his death in 1629 Sir Alexander Temple was a thorn in the side of the Caroline administration. He protested against the Winchelsea election in 1624, and issued a series of petitions berating the condition of Tilbury Fort, of which he was captain.30CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 209; 1627-8, pp. 23, 54, 62; 1631-3, pp. 299, 581; 1625-49, p. 361; APC July 1628-Apr. 1629, p. 136. In May 1627, Temple was arrested for neglecting to provide horses for the musters.31APC 1627, pp. 272, 301.

Early life

James Temple’s early life is obscure. In 1622 he entered Lincoln’s Inn in the same week as his elder brother. His manucaptors, or sureties, were his cousin John Temple (son of Sir Thomas) and John Grenville.32LIL, Admiss. Bk. 4, ff. 72v-73. In November 1631 moves were made to eject James from his chambers at the inn owing to his long absence, but he claimed special reasons for his failure to attend commons, and was allowed to keep them. It is possible that in 1627 he accompanied his brother on the expedition to the Île de Ré, where the latter fought, and was killed; Temple later claimed to have military experience, and others would attest to his tactical prowess. Temple surrendered his chambers on 8 July 1633.33LIL, E1a1 (Red Bk. 1), ff. 148, 162.

Before his father’s death Temple married his step-sister, Mary Busbridge, daughter of Sir Alexander’s third wife, while his cousin Anne Temple married Mary’s brother, John Busbridge*, strengthening the web of family ties.34Vis. Sussex (Harl. Soc. liii), 149; Berry, Suss. Pedigrees, 3; Prime, Temple Family, 34, 37; Temple and Temple, Temple Memoirs, 48. However, his father’s debts meant that portions of his estate in Suffolk and Essex had to be sold.35Prime, Temple Family, Appendix, 78; PROB11/156/604. Acting with two of his father’s executors, Carew Saunders and Henry Whalley (later judge-advocate of the New Model army), and with the latter’s brother Edward Whalley*, Temple sold Longhouse, which his father had acquired in 1621, for £5,000 to one Thomas Ravenscroft, who then leased the property back to Temple for £340 a year. Temple finally severed his ties with his father’s Essex property in 1637, by assigning his lease to Sir Richard Onslow*.36CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 204; Essex RO, D/DRU T1/225-35, 238. Five of his six children were baptised between April 1629 and December 1633 at Etchingham, Sussex, where he lived in close proximity to the Busbridges.37IGI.

War service

On the eve of the civil war, Temple was moving in firmly parliamentarian circles. He was living with the leading Sussex godly gentleman Sir Thomas Pelham*, when in 1641 he donated £1 for the relief of distressed Protestants in Ireland.38E179/191/390/3. Temple and his family were also still close to his uncle, Viscount Saye.39E. Suss. RO, Dunn 51/54, 57. At the formation of the parliamentarian army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in the summer of 1642, Temple was listed as a captain in the regiment of Viscount Saye, with a military banner proclaiming his hope in God.40A Catalogue of the Names (1642), 8, 13 (E.83.9); Sloane 5247, f. 68v.

Like his father before him, James Temple was appointed captain of the fort at Tilbury in Essex, following a suggestion made in the Commons on 5 October 1642; like his father, he bemoaned the lack of funds to maintain the garrison.41Add. 18777, f. 21a. On 31 January 1643 the Commons ordered that money (£140) and horse belonging to James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, which had been seized by Temple, could be used to pay its arrears, but these were evidently insufficient.42CJ ii. 949b-950a. In letters to his Essex friend Sir Thomas Barrington* in July and August Temple complained that, although he had waited on committees at Westminster for ten months, no pay had been received at the fort, and some of the gunners had fled to the king. He ‘would have made the case more public but such weakness is dangerous to discover’.43Eg. 2647, f. 55; HMC 7th Rep. 554. He had attempted to discharge his trust, but ‘some men are put in there who will be under no command’ – unpaid men whose ‘service is a burden to them as also a torment to me’. By August there were ‘not now above 20 men under my command’, whereas ‘when I have had a 1,000 men, horse, and foot, I never had the least discontent given or taken’.44Eg. 2647, f. 192; HMC 7th Rep. 561. On 14 August Barrington reported to the Commons regarding Tilbury, but his suggestion that extra men be sent to Temple was rejected.45CJ iii. 204b, 205b. A further petition from Temple read in the House on 15 September, and then referred to the committee of revenue, had apparently made little progress by late October, when the same committee was ordered to consider the maintenance of the fort.46CJ iii. 242a, 284b.

In the meantime, on 18 July Temple had been named to the parliamentarian committee for Sussex.47CJ iii. 173a. He was in the county towards the end of 1643 and, having masterminded the construction of defensive works around Bramber Castle, defended it against royalist troops, and prevented their march towards Lewes; his horse ‘welcomed them with drakes and muskets, sending some eight or nine men to hell’.48Blaauw, 'Passages of the Civil War in Suss.', 57-8; Fletcher, Suss., 268. Eyewitness Francis Cheynell, rector of Petworth and chaplain to the regiment of Anthony Stapley I*, described how on 12 December his action ‘against a bold and daring enemy’ dazzled ‘all of the country’, but he himself ‘did not marvel at it, for [Temple] is a man that hath his head full of stratagems, his heart full of piety and valour, and his hand as full of success as it is of dexterity’.49T. Grantham, 'Historic notices of Bramber Castle', Suss. Arch. Coll. v. 154.

His local standing thereby enhanced, in June 1644 Temple was added to those named in the ordinance for the association of the four southern counties, and the following October was ordered to go to Sussex to assist with the preservation of the county.50CJ iii. 532a, 671a; LJ vi. 592b. He was appointed governor of Arundel Castle in May 1645 and was among members of the Sussex county committee, who signed the letter regarding the complaints of the Sussex clubmen, directed to Speaker William Lenthall* on 29 September.51LJ vii. 364a; Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 251-55b.

Recruiter in the Long Parliament

Following a writ issued earlier in September, by 10 October Temple was elected to Parliament to replace the royalist Sir Thomas Bowyer*, disabled from sitting, at Bramber.52CJ iv. 272b; Perfect Passages no. 51 (8-15 Oct. 1645), 404 (E.266.2). 26/1/21. He had taken his seat by 29 October 1645, when he signed the Solemn League and Covenant.53CJ iv. 326a. Among his kinsmen at Westminster were not only his brother-in-law Sir Martin Lister* and his cousins Nathaniel Fiennes I* and Sir Peter Temple*, but also other Mr Temples. Especially before April 1647, it is not always possible to distinguish James from his distant cousin Peter Temple*, another recruiter MP also often styled ‘Captain Temple’, who served in the New Model army and shared his political opinions; thereafter James was frequently, but not invariably, styled ‘Colonel Temple’, a rank that Peter did not attain until after Pride’s Purge.54CJ v. 132b. Confusion is compounded by the arrival at Westminster in February 1647 of another kinsman, Thomas Temple. Unfortunately, some important references are non-specific.

For the first 12 months of their parliamentary careers, neither James nor Peter was much in evidence in the House, perhaps partly owing to their ongoing military responsibilities. On 13 December 1645 Captain Temple was added to the committee receiving documents returned from the committee of accounts, while on 21 March 1646 Mr Temple was granted leave to go into the country without prejudice to his attendance allowance.55CJ iv. 376a, 484a. It was certainly James who on 13 April was given permission to visit in the Tower of London Colonel Lunsford, would-be assassin of his old friend Sir Thomas Pelham, and he had at least opportunity to be at Westminster for long periods.56CJ iv. 507b. Although he was made a commissioner for sewers in Sussex in May, and placed on the Sussex commission of peace in February, Temple did not make his first appearance at the quarter sessions at Arundel until January 1647, and at the assizes until two months later.57E. Suss. RO, DAP1/2; Suss. QSOB 1642–1649, 113; ASSI35/88/1. The pattern of his later appointments may make him the prime candidate as the Temple named to committees to consider compensation for Viscount Saye and Nathaniel Bacon* after the abolition of the court of wards (24 Nov. 1646), and soldiers’ arrears (10, 25 Dec.).58CJ iv. 727a; v. 9b, 28b.

James Temple’s promotion to colonel by 2 April 1647 was conceivably in respect or anticipation of his interest in Tilbury fort, from which it seems he was only temporarily diverted by his appointments in Sussex. On that date, probably in respect of his commission at Tilbury, ‘Colonel Temple’ was placed on the committee addressing the contentious question of whether control of the militia of London should rest in Presbyterian hands.59CJ v. 132b. ‘Colonel Temple’ was named on 23 April to the committee to investigate the radical tracts A New Found Stratagem and An Apology of the Soldiery.60CJ v. 153a. The former bore relation to affairs in Essex, where in July Temple probably had some involvement in the seizure of Tilbury by forces of General Sir Thomas Fairfax*. Temple’s Independent credentials are confirmed by the fact that, like Peter Temple, he was among those who on 4 August signed the declaration of Members who fled to the army during the Presbyterian coup, although he managed to be present at the Sussex assizes only two days earlier.61LJ ix. 385; ASSI35/88/3.

Following the return of the Independents to Westminster, and as part of their attempt to regain control of Irish affairs from the Presbyterians, on 21 September James Temple was nominated with Thomas Chaloner* and William Jephson* to go to Ireland, as a commissioner for Munster.62LJ ix. 440b, 444b, 448a; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 764. It is not clear whether or not he actually went. ‘Colonel Temple’ was named on 6 October to a committee considering propositions to be sent to the king concerning Presbyterian church government, and on 2 November to the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs.63CJ v. 327b, 347b; LJ ix. 506a. James is recorded as having attended this committee periodically from January to May 1648, and then once in mid-July.64SP63/266, ff. 59v-99v.

The royalist uprisings of the late spring and summer then required Temple’s military skills. On 23 May 1648 a committee of both houses entrusted him formally with the defence of Tilbury Fort.65CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 74 Yielding to his representations that Tilbury was inadequately guarded, the Derby House Committee and the Commons soon agreed to the recruitment of further troops and the supply of 80 muskets, in readiness for any attack.66CJ v. 572a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 76, 79. Yet, while those at Westminster appreciated the vital importance of the garrison – which controlled the flow of shipping in the Thames estuary, prevented the transport of ammunition to royalists via Hull, and facilitated the passage of Fairfax’s troops to Colchester – they considered Temple’s opinions to be expressed too forcefully.67CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 123, 125. The DHC found he exhibited ‘more resentment than there was cause’, and took umbrage that Temple should blame it for lack of supplies.68CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 86, 88. However, he successfully drew attention to the ‘unhealthiness of that place’: by late July he had been furnished with extra men and in August he received material for repairs.69CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 242, 369. Meanwhile, at Westminster earlier in the month, he was named to another committee reorganising the capital’s militia forces (10 July).70CJ v. 630a. On 26 August Temple informed the House that, acting on parliamentary instructions to inspect shipping, he had detained one Halliburton, who was found to be carrying a letter from the king to the Scottish Parliament; the letter was confiscated but Temple was ordered to deliver Halliburton to the lord admiral, for conveyance to Scotland, and in future to detain all Scots passengers on ships.71CJ v. 647a, 684b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 274.

During that crucial summer Temple had not forgotten Sussex. In June, as news began to arrive of the Horsham rising, he was reported to have advised sending a party of 50 or 60 horse to Sussex, to ‘give life to the honest party and make head against the rest’.72Clarke Pprs. ii. 28. In September he returned to the county to attend the assizes.73ASSI35/89/2.

Regicide and Rump

Once the royalist threat had passed, in October Temple was summoned before the Derby House Committee to discuss the fort at Gravesend.74CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 295. His movements for some weeks thereafter are unknown, but on 20 December he dissented from the vote of 5 December, thereby expressing his opposition to negotiations with the king.75Add. 5705, f. 172v; PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, pp. 473-4. He then collected committee appointments to address the long-running business of Henry Peck*, commissary-general for Sussex (21 Dec.), to investigate bribes (23 Dec.), and to raise money from the sale of dean and chapter lands (12 Jan. 1649).76CJ vi. 102a, 103a, 116a. By at least 23 December, Peter Temple was also being referred to as Colonel Temple, by virtue of his militia appointment in Leicestershire, so an element of confusion again appears. It is not clear which Colonel Temple was named to the committee considering the ordinance for the king’s trial, but both were named in it as commissioners (6 Jan.). James attended three of the preliminary eight meetings held in the Painted Chamber (8, 12, 15 Jan.) but was not included on any of the sub-committees organising the trial. Once proceedings were underway, he attended on eight days in the Painted Chamber and all of the sessions in Westminster Hall, and crucially, appended his signature to Charles’s death warrant.77Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 1379; Muddiman, Trial, 76, 88-9, 96, 103, 193-229; M. Noble, The Lives of the English Regicides (1798), ii. 263-4. His motivation does not appear; his participation seems to have been somewhat less than that of his kinsman.

From February 1649 until at least the summer of 1650 it remains difficult to distinguish the two Temples in the Commons Journal, although the fact that on 5 February and 7 March 1649, and on 14 June 1650, when both appear, they are listed as Colonel Temple (once ‘John’) and Mr Peter Temple might suggest that during this time an unspecified reference to ‘Colonel Temple’ alone more usually signified the former.78CJ vi. 131b, 158a, 423b. The first two dual appearances were to committees to investigate obnoxious publications and to work on the legislation for the abolition of the monarchy and House of Lords; on the principle advanced above, in relation to other important foundations of the new commonwealth, it was possibly James who was nominated, for instance, to committees dealing with assessment for the army (8 Mar.) and the sale of fee farm rents (9 Mar.), while Peter was intended to deal with remodelling commissions of the peace (8 Feb.).79CJ vi. 130a, 134a, 153a, 159a, 160b. Similarly, a few months later, it was perhaps James who was appointed to committees for money lent on the public faith (4 July) and for an act of oblivion (5 July), and Peter to the committee for removing free quarter (20 July).80CJ vi. 250a, 250b, 265a. It was certainly James and not Peter who was active on the Committee of Navy and Customs from mid-January 1649.81Bodl. Rawl. A.224.

It was also James who continued to serve on the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs: on 8 December 1648 the possibility of his going to Munster seems to have resurfaced; he signed orders of the Star Chamber Committee on 12 March and 23 May 1649; and on 15 June he reported from it the accounts of Lady Borlase.82CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 321 ; 1649–1650, p. 192; SP63/344, ff. 17, 30; CJ vi. 234a. In the light of this, it is plausibly James who was named to committees for the advancement of the gospel in Ireland (30 Nov.) and, by extension, in Wales (29 Jan. 1650).83CJ vi. 327b, 352a. But both Temples were evidently interested in religion: Colonel James and Mr Peter were nominated to the committee charged with suppressing Ranters (14 June 1650); Colonel Peter and Colonel James were added to the Committee for Plundered Minsters on 4 July (both were active members of this committee).84CJ vi. 423b, 437a; SP22/2B, ff. 2, 110, 112, 114, 116, 168, 340, 344. It is therefore only James’s early seniority that makes him slightly more likely to have been on committees for the maintenance of preaching ministers (26 Apr. 1649), institutions to benefices (with Sussex activist Harbert Morley*, 18 July 1649) and – less plausibly – preaching in Coventry (23 Aug. 1650).85CJ vi. 196a, 263b, 458b.

Both Temples were appointed to committees to enable former officers to access arrears of pay (23 Nov. 1649) and extend the power of the Committee for Compounding and the Committee for Advance of Money (3 July 1650), although for professional and for private reasons James may have had more direct interest in their workings.86CJ vi. 325b, 436b. His responsibilities as governor of Tilbury Fort, reaffirmed with the advent of the commonwealth, were wide and involved interaction with the council of state. He continued to monitor passing shipping for suspicious passengers and forbidden cargo.87CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 14, 27, 85, 269, 527; CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 334. He was the Colonel Temple on the Commons committee to review statutes curbing the transportation of gold and silver, whose own preventative propositions were referred on 14 April 1649 to the council of state.88CJ vi. 186a; SP25/87, f. 42. The ramifications of this were potentially far-reaching, and included the doubtless controversial demolition of bridges at Gravesend, where premises had been used to ship the contraband (Sept. 1649, Jan.-Feb. 1650).89CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 309, 503, 563. With merchant Maurice Thomson, brother of Colonel George Thomson*, he was summoned to the council to discuss the transport of coal (4 Sept. 1649).90CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 299. Meanwhile, his plans for the fortification and funding of the Tilbury garrison were discussed by the council and the admiralty committee, and occasionally surfaced in the House, as when Sir William Masham* was ordered to report on them (28 May 1649).91SP25/62, f. 300; SP25/94, f. 154; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 154, 156, 158, 161, 269, 299; 1650, p. 172. Temple’s petition, read in the Commons on 14 June 1649, requesting that some of the money seized from a Dutch ship should be retained by him towards Tilbury expenses was granted six days later.92  CJ vi. 232b, 238b.

Temple was thanked by the council for his services at least once (28 July 1649) and supplies sometimes came his way.93CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 252, 556. However, his duties – and perhaps other concerns – kept him away from Parliament for significant periods; there was a later claim that his ‘seldom attendance’ prevented his reporting on the case of Henry Peck.94SP18/69, f. 135. Neither Temple appears in the Journal between late April and mid-June 1649, between late July and late November 1649, between the beginning of December and the end of January 1650, and from February to April that year. Although an apparently hostile motion summoning him to attend the House as soon as convenient was defeated on 23 July 1649, Temple evidently had enemies who could take advantage of his absence and expose some apparent duplicity.95CJ vi. 268a. In 1648 there had been allegations that he had reneged on bonds, and that, when presented with writs, Temple ‘threw them on the ground and spurned them with his foot’.96HMC 7th Rep. 27. In November 1649 the Committee for Advance of Money ordered commissioners in Sussex to investigate reports that the young Sir Charles Shelley, ward of Temple and of Benjamin Weston* since January 1646, and born and bred a Catholic, was abroad, leaving his £3,000 a year estate in Temple’s hands without any account having been made to the state.97CCAM 527; C78/522/6 . Temple, whose involvement with Shelley had led to his giving the latter’s home at Michelgrove as his address in 1646, 1647 and 1652, told the Committee for Compounding in June 1650 that Shelley was only 13 years old – too young to be accounted a papist.98LI Admiss. i. 253; C3/463/39; CCC 2370; Notts. Archives, DD/T/45/23, DD/T/101/3. But this claim was contested and in late July the committee for Sussex sought to seize Shelley’s property from Temple and sell it; the case dragged on until an order for discharge of sequestration was issued in January 1652.99CCC 2370-1; SP23/237, ff. 240, 242, 244; C78/522/6.

Temple also acted as creditor, with Edward Montagu†, earl of Manchester, and Henry Darley*, of the sequestered Mountjoy, earl of Newport. In January 1649, it was ordered that these three were to enjoy the rents and arrears of his properties, and in July, having paid £2,000, as the remainder of Newport’s fine, Temple and Darley were granted possession of Newport’s manors in Leicestershire.100CCC 1245. A complicated portfolio of business interests, which included the affairs of his deceased royalist half-brother Sir Thomas Penyston*, also perpetuated lawsuits.101PROB11/201/153; C3/463/39, 42; C5/5/158; C10/1/114; C10/4/186; C10/6/104; C10/7/126, 129; C7/395/45; C10/9/91; Notts. Archives, DD/T/45/24. Petitions relating to disputes which had surfaced in the Long Parliament appeared again until in January 1653 the Commons decided to leave matters to the process of the law.102CJ vii. 220b, 249a, 251a, 264a.

This backdrop makes it difficult to pinpoint precisely all the factors which in September 1650 led to Temple being replaced at Tilbury by Colonel George Crompton. Complaints made by Robert Knightly, a Tilbury recusant, that Temple had destroyed his House were dismissed by the Essex county committee on the grounds that Temple had done so for the service of the public – as he had been ordered to do with the Gravesend bridges.103CCC 2862; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 309, 503, 563. However, in May 1650 Temple was summoned to the council of state to respond to allegations about the behaviour of officers in the town, and in August the council established a committee to receive Colonel John Barkstead’s* account of the defects of the fort, and to consider a fit person to act as governor.104CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 172, 277. Temple, who was relatively visible at Westminster over that summer, appears to have agreed that the Tilbury post should be held by someone who resided there constantly. On 16 October, Temple was ordered to deliver all ordnance in his possession to Crompton, and was allowed ten shillings per day until some other means of satisfying him could be found.105CJ vi. 474a; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 351, 389. A hidden element in all this might be Temple’s relations with the admiralty and views on relations with the Dutch which could have been at odds with those who sought war. Family histories claim that he married as his second wife Johanna Maria, daughter of the Dutch admiral, Maarten Tromp: although this lady was born after 1640 and neither the two Temple family histories nor Dutch biographical sources make the connection, there may be some other Netherlandish link.106Temple, Temple Memoirs, 48; Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek.

Temple’s activity after this is something of a mystery. Four out of six references to Colonel Temple receiving Commons’ appointments in 1651 are specific to Peter, while another in September 1652 is the last for either.107CJ vi. 534b, 577b; vii. 49b, 55b, 58a, 134a, 139a, 158a, 182b. On 15 May 1651 the Journal recorded that – in a breach of parliamentary privilege – James had been arrested, presumably in connection with debts and lawsuits.108CJ vi. 574a. Following the reading on 24 November 1652 of a petition from one Mary Willan, with whom he was at suit, he was summoned to attend the House a fortnight later, although Parliament’s interest in the matter was abandoned on 19 January 1653.109CJ vii. 220b, 249a. A petition from Temple himself, of an unspecified nature, was read on 27 January, and referred to a committee, but the business seems to have been buried, in spite of an order on 4 March that a report be made in his case.110CJ vii. 251a, 264a.

Meanwhile, having been added to the Kent militia commission in May 1650, for a while Temple appears to have increased his participation in local affairs, but he disappeared from the commission of the peace in both Sussex and Essex after October 1652, having assiduously attended the quarter sessions since April 1649.111CSP Dom. 1650, p. 149; Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 170, 194; E. Suss. RO, DAP1/2/4, pp. 142, 161; QO/EW2, ff. 8v, 13, 16, 17v, 19v, 21, 23v, 25, 28v, 38; QO/EW3; Essex RO, Q/SR 349/160; ASSI35/91/8/49; ASSI35/92/1/34; ASSI35/92/2/21; ASSI35/93/1/21; ASSI35/93/2/21; ASSI35/94/1/38. On the other hand, between 1653 and 1659 he was present at the Sussex assizes.112ASSI35/90/2-ASSI35/100/6. Unlike his step-brothers and his sons, he was not mentioned in the will of his step-mother and mother-in-law, drafted in May 1654; his son John was named executor.113PROB11/248/699.

Restored Rump

Temple resurfaced in May 1659 as a Member of the restored Rump, although once again there is a problem of identification in the Journals. James was possibly the Temple added to the committee considering a militia bill for Southwark (25 May) and certainly, with his kinsman, nominated to consider a petition from inhabitants of Deal in Kent (28 May).114CJ vii. 664a, 668a. Given his previous interests, it seems likely that he was the Temple named to committees to investigate a petition from shipowners (7 June) and the conservation of Thames navigation (8 Aug.).115CJ vii. 673b, 751a. Given his circumstances, it also seems probable that he was appointed to discuss the release of debtors on 18 July, the day it was ordered that he was to have lodgings in Whitehall.116CJ vii. 722a; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 34, 192. Both Temples were added to committees relating to maimed soldiers (30 July) and to the Sussex estates of Thomas Bellingham (5 Aug.), but only James to one concerning the use of Worcester House, sequestered from the royalist and recusant earl (20 Aug.).117CJ vii. 741b, 748b, 763b. Either might have been involved in committees dealing with money, but James seems an unlikely consultant on the mourning for Oliver Cromwell* (14 July).118CJ vii. 684b, 690a, 704b, 766a, 772a.

While Peter was given leave of absence on 10 September, James may have left Westminster earlier.119CJ vii. 777a. There is no sign of him between late August and the forcible dissolution of the House in on 13 October. However, there is no doubt that he opposed the army move which effected it. When on 29 December, three days after the Rump had reassembled, it recorded a vote of thanks to 14 members of the council of state and ‘such as acted with them ... for the service of Parliament, during the time of the late interruption’ Temple was among them.120CJ vii. 799a. Whether his participation was motivated by civilian republicanism or by more self-interested considerations, is unknown. However, it is worth noting that Peter Temple, who had also kept away during the ‘interruption’, was not included. It thus seems more plausible that James was the Colonel Temple appointed on 30 December, in company with others thanked the day before, to a committee investigating the cases of those illegally imprisoned during that period.121CJ vii. 800a

Otherwise, the Temples were habitually differentiated, and it is possible to discern their divergent interests. Named on 11 January 1660 to consider a bill limiting the franchise and eligibility in parliamentary elections, James was later placed on the committee devising an oath to be taken by members of the new council of state (15 Feb.).122CJ vii. 807a, 844a. Again engaged in admiralty and navy affairs, he was nominated to a committee on 12 January and reported its amendments to the regulation bill on the 28th.123CJ vii. 808b, 825a; OPH xxii. 65. Meanwhile, Peter was mostly concerned with the army, money and justices of the peace.124CJ vii. 811a, 818b, 821a, 822a, 843b. There is no sign of either actually sitting in the House after the readmission of the secluded Members on 21 February (21 Feb. 1660), but on 2 March the Commons resolved that despatches from Ireland brought to Westminster by ‘Colonel Temple and others’ – probably James in view of his previous record – should be forwarded to the council of state.125CJ vii. 860a.

Fugitive and indicted regicide

On 4 June 1660 the proclamation for apprehending the king’s judges was passed.126LJ xi. 52b. Temple fled London, arriving on the 11th at the house of Humphrey Hale in Stivichall, Coventry.127CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 59. Five days later Bulstrode Whitelocke* recorded in his diary that Temple had surrendered.128Whitelocke, Diary, 606. On 18 June Henry Smith reported from Coventry that, going to investigate rumours of ‘a suspicious person’ at Hales’s house, he had found Temple, who at first claimed that he was one ‘Busbridge’ (his wife’s maiden name) and was travelling to Ireland. But the kin to whom he appealed for corroboration did not supply it: his first cousin Thomas Temple of Frankton, who was also connected to the Busbridges, vanished; Thomas’s wife refused to support the story. At this point Temple had confessed his true identity and his role in the regicide. He was then committed to the custody of the sheriff. When the Lords heard this news, they ordered that Temple be brought to London.129HMC 7th Rep. 101; Prime, Temple Family, 16, 34; E. Suss. RO, Dunn 51/47-57; LJ xi. 66b; PA, Main Pprs. 18 June 1660.

Temple had already been excepted from the act of oblivion (9 June), and by 23 July it had been confirmed that he had both sat in the high court and signed the death warrant.130LJ xi. 101-2. He was therefore excluded from the act of indemnity (29 Aug.), although his execution was suspended until ordered by an act of Parliament.131LJ xi. 102b; SR. On 24 August, the Commons committed Temple, along with the other regicides, into the hands of the lieutenant of the Tower of London.132Ludlow, Mems., ii. 294.

Temple made his first appearance at the Sessions House at the Old Bailey on 10 October, and pleaded not guilty to the charge of being a regicide. Six days later he requested documentary proof, but conceded that ‘if it be my hand I must confess all circumstances must follow’. Upon production of the death warrant, complete with his signature, Temple acknowledged it as his hand, but claimed, ‘I never did consult concerning the court’. Prosecution counsel admitted that ‘there are some worse than he’, but added that ‘he is bad enough’.133State Trials, v. 1006, 1217; An Exact and most impartial accompt of the indictment, trial, and judgement of nine and twenty regicides (1660), 29. Found guilty, and asked if he had anything more to say, Temple invoked ‘the benefit of the proclamation’: having surrendered himself according to the declaration of 4 June, he was pleading for his life.134State Trials, v. 1219, 1223; Exact and Most Impartial Accompt, 240, 266, 271, 276.

In January 1662 Secretary of State Edward Nicholas was informed by a self-declared ‘passionate lover of the royal family’, that Temple’s son Peter had responded to news that the regicides were likely to be executed by speaking ‘reproachfully’ against the king and the duke of York. He had ‘broke[n] forth very passionately saying those gentlemen in the Tower were to[o] honest, else they would not have been trapped’ and had added that ‘if those men suffer I shall justly say the king minds his pleasures with ladies more than keeping his word’.135SP29/49, f. 117. An act for the execution of the remaining regicides was indeed planned, but having been read twice, and committed, it was dropped after much discussion.136HMC 7th Rep. 155. In the process, on 7 February Temple appeared before the Lords and, asked why the bill should not pass, replied that ‘he had nothing to justify, but did condemn himself, and abhorred to the fact’, yet he was simply taking advantage of the king’s proclamation offering mercy. He was then returned to the Tower.137LJ xi. 378a, 380b.

The same day he submitted an expansive petition to the Lords, ‘in sadness and great sorrow of spirit’, lamenting his hand in ‘that horrid murder of his late sacred majesty of ever blessed memory’, yet protesting – fantastically – that he ‘had no share in that wicked contrivance’. After Pride’s Purge he had, he claimed incorrectly, ‘deserted the House, and continued in Sussex’ until 8 January 1649, and he had been absent from London on the day of the execution. Furthermore, he asserted that he had been briefed by the deceased king’s chaplains Dr Stephen Goffe (Sussex-born brother of regicide William Goffe*) and Dr Henry Hammond to accept nomination as a judge ‘on purpose to discover what resolutions were taken concerning his late majesty, and who were the chief promoters thereof, and accordingly from time to time to give them an account’. In pursuit of this he had ‘often applied himself to that cruel tyrant and usurper Cromwell with tears in his eyes begging of him not to bring such a blot of bloody stain upon the Protestants as to execute his sacred majesty’. It was on the assurance of Cromwell’s having ‘seemingly yielded’ to his entreaties that ‘your petitioner did concur with those unhappy proceedings’. ‘Before and afterwards’ he had ‘concealed’ Goffe and Hammond ‘to the hazard of his life’; it was on suspicion of this that he lost ‘the government of Tilbury Fort and all his arrears, and ever afterwards was out of all employment and favour’.138HMC 7th Rep. 156.

While Temple’s attempt to escape culpability can be dismissed, there are some plausible details in his account. Hammond and his brother Lieutenant-general Thomas Hammond were both connected by marriage to the wider Temple family. On the other hand, Temple made no mention of his involvement with Goffe and Hammond until 1662, when he was safe from contradiction: Hammond was dead and Goffe was a Catholic exile teaching in a French seminary. Temple’s petition was supported by statements from various royalists, who claimed that he had offered them assistance during the interregnum. His kinsman William Denton related that, after the arrest of his brother Sir Alexander Denton*, Temple had been ‘laborious to procure them what favours he could from the present powers’. Other certificates on Temple’s behalf were delivered by members of the Busbridge family and by Frances, Lady Cobham (wife of Sir John Brooke*, Baron Cobham), a distant relative who had been imprisoned for corresponding with Charles I and acting as a go-between with royalists in London. Temple allegedly secured her the liberty of the prison, and eventually liberty upon bail.139HMC 7th Rep. 156. Whatever the veracity of Temple’s claims, his incarceration continued.

In the meantime, Temple’s estate appears neither to have been valued, nor to have passed as did those of other regicides to the duke of York, suggesting some uncertainty as to what his fate should be, or at least some lobbying on behalf of his dependent relatives.140LR2/266, f. 7. Despatched in 1662 to Mount Orgueil, Jersey, he was named as a prisoner there in February 1668, with Colonel Thomas Waite* and Henry Smith*.141R. Mollet, A Chronology of Jersey (1949), 33; CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 229. On 27 July 1674 a warrant was issued to move Temple ‘for his better health’, and he was transferred to Elizabeth Castle.142SP44/40, f. 227; Mollet, Jersey, 33. The date of his death is unknown. His son Alexander of Ballinderry, who in 1651 was a captain-surgeon in Major-general Thomas Harrison I’s* dragoons and who married Mary Chambre, heiress of the Chambre family of Denbighshire and Co. Wicklow, had died in Ireland in November 1663; his other sons, John, Peter and James, disappeared into obscurity.143CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 41, 444, 515; Prime, Temple Family, 38. No further members of his immediate family or direct descendants served in Parliament. The act of signing Charles I’s death warrant is the outstanding event in Temple’s career, but the elaborate tale he told in order to exculpate himself from responsibility for that act fails to supply motivation and lacks credibility. Although Temple was demonstrably a political Independent with religious interests, and a New Model army officer, his revolutionary zeal is questionable, as his disappearance from Westminster politics in the early 1650s attests. Yet the strategic importance of his command at Tilbury gave him a potentially important influence on national security and maritime affairs, and occasionally he was useful at Westminster, especially with regard to Ireland.