Temple, SIR WILLIAM, diplomatist and essay-writer, was the eldest son of Sir John Temple, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and of Mary Hammond, sister of the well-known royalist divine, and was born at Blackfriars in London in 1628. He studied two years at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he had Cudworth for his tutor, but at nineteen went abroad on his travels, falling in love with Dorothy Osborne (1627-95) in the Isle of Wight on his way to France. His own father sat for Chichester in the Long Parliament, while Sir Peter Osborne was governor of Guernsey and a strong royalist, and naturally disliked the match. But the lovers were constant in their affection, and their seven years of separation gave opportunity for those delightful letters of Dorothy's, the charm of which defies the touch of time. Temple travelled in France, Spain, and Holland, married Dorothy in January 1655, lived some years in studious retirement in Ireland, and was returned for Carlow to the convention parliament at Dublin in 1660. Three years later he settled finally in England; in 1665 was sent on a secret mission to the Bishop of Münster; and on his return was created a baronet and appointed resident at the court of Brussels. His most important diplomatic success was the famous treaty of 1668, known as the Triple Alliance, by which England, Holland, and Sweden united to curb the ambitious schemes of France. This negotiation was accomplished in five days, in conjunction with the great Dutch statesman De Witt, but was rendered vain through the treachery of Charles II. in the secret Treaty of Dover (1670). Temple also took part in the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (May 1668), and soon after was appointed ambassador at the Hague. He had his share in the long congress at Nimeguen, and was recalled in June 1671 a few months before the beginning of the shameful war between England and Holland. By the Treaty of Westminster (February 1674) Temple ended the war, and, after declining both the embassy to Spain and the secretaryship of state, went again ambassador to Holland. In 1677 he assisted in bringing about the marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Princess Mary. Charles II. in vain offered him again the secretaryship of state; and in the confusion of the Popish Plot accepted his proposed constitutional remedy of a reformed privy-council of thirty persons, by whose deliberations to be guided in all public affairs. As might have been foreseen, so numerous a council, under such an unprincipled sovereign as Charles II., and in times of such fierce faction and widespread corruption, proved an utter failure. For some little time an inner council of four—Temple, Halifax, Essex, and Sunderland—attempted to control public business, but Temple, who was too honest for his fellows, soon felt himself being ousted even from this, and retired to his villa at Sheen, where he lived till 1686, thereafter at Moor Park in Surrey.
When the Revolution placed William III. on the throne Temple was again offered the secretaryship of state, but again refused. His son, the sole survivor of seven children, was made secretary for war, but a week after drowned himself in the Thames, his mind being unable to bear the burden of responsibility. The remainder of his days Temple gave to letters and to gardening. The king occasionally consulted him, and during great part of this period he had with him as his secretary young Jonathan Swift, who regarded his stately self-complacent patron with more fear than affection, but ultimately became his literary executor. Temple died at Moor Park, January 27, 1699, and was buried beside his wife in Westminster Abbey, his heart beneath the sun-dial at Moor Park.
As a writer Temple is now known chiefly by his historical Memoirs (1691, 1709) and his Miscellanea (1679, 1692), a collection of essays on various subjects—government, trade, gardening, heroic virtue, poetry. The second part contains the essay 'Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning,' which opened the famous controversy on the Letters of Phalaris. Temple has been considered one of the reformers of English style—'the first writer,' says Dr Johnson, 'who gave cadence to English prose.' His style wears a singularly modern air, and is smooth, flowing, and agreeable. 'What can be more pleasant,' says Charles Lamb, 'than the way in which the retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned in his delightful retreat at Sheen? They scent of Nimeguen and the Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under an ambassador.' Temple's pretensions to learning are merely amusing, and he has little real weight as a political writer, but he expatiates very pleasantly on foreign travel and country life, on flowers and fruits, on parterres, terrace-walks, and fountains. His epicurean temperament is happily and characteristically displayed in the last words of his last essay: 'When all is done human life is at the greatest and best but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.'
His collected works fill 4 vols. (1814). The older Lives by Boyer, Swift, and Temple's sister, Lady Giffard, were superseded by the elaborate Memoirs by Thomas Peregrine Courtenay (2 vols. 1836), reviewed by Macaulay in a well-known and brilliant essay. The Letters of Dorothy Osborne, seventy-one in number, written during the last two years of their seven years' courtship, mostly from Chicksands in Bedfordshire, were admirably edited by E. A. Parry (1888).