Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/136

Grenville the following month Temple for the second time in this year refused to become first lord of the treasury. In the following year he intrigued with his brother George and the Duke of Bedford against the Rockingham ministry, and opposed the repeal of the Stamp Act, In July, at Pitt's advice he was again offered the post of the first lord of the treasury, which he refused after a stormy interview with his brother-m-law. ‘I might,’ he wrote to his brother George, ‘have stood a capital cypher, surrounded with cyphers of quite a different complexion, the whole under the guidance of that great luminary, the Great Commoner, with the privy seal in his hand.… Thus ends the political farce of my journey to town, as it was always intended’ (Grenville Papers, iii. 267-8). Temple having openly quarrelled with his brother-in-law now endeavoured to influence the public mind against him by a pamphlet warfare, conducted with most bitter personal animosity, and it was not until November 1768, shortly after Chatham's resignation of office, that a reconciliation took place between them. In the debate on the Duke of Richmond's resolutions relating to the disorders in America on 18 May 1770, Temple made a severe attack upon the Government, declaring that he had ‘known administrations that were highly obnoxious to the people; but such a set of ministers as the present, so lost to all sense of shame, so eminently above the mere pretence of regard for justice,’ he had never seen (Parl. Hist. xvi. 1024). After the death of his brother George, Temple retired to a great extent from political life, and amused himself with the improvement of his house and gardens at Stowe. He was created a D.C.L. of Oxford University on 4 July 1771. His last reported speech in the House of Lords was delivered on 5 March 1778, when he declaimed against Lord North's conciliatory bills, asserting his belief that America had ‘aimed at independency from the beginning,’ and declaring that the ‘men who had shown to the whole world they were incapable of conducting a war … were now preparing to give another proof of their incapacity by showing they do not know how to make peace (ib. xx. 845-8). He was thrown out of his pony carriage in the Park Ridings at Stowe, and fractured his skull. After lingering for a few days in an insensible state, he died on 12 Sept. 1779 in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He was buried at Stowe on 16 Sept. 1779, but his body was afterwards removed to Wotton. Temple was a man of wealth and position, but without any great talents except that for intrigue. His ambition was unbounded, but his factiousness and arrogance made him the most impracticable of men. ‘Those who knew his habits,’ wrote Macaulay, ‘tracked him as men track a mole. It was his nature to grub underground. Whenever a heap of dirt was flung up, it might well be suspected that he was at work in some foul, crooked labyrinth below’ (Essays, p. 762). He is supposed to have been the author of several anonymous and scurrilous pamphlets (for a list of which see the Grenville Papers, iii. cl-cli), and to have assisted either with money or information in the production of many more.

Walpole, while referring to Wilkes and Churchill, speaks of Temple as their familiar, ‘who whispered them where they might find torches, but took care never to be seen to light one himself (Memoirs of George III, i. p. 182). The authorship of Junius's ‘Letters’ has also been ascribed to him. Though a bitter and unscrupulous opponent in public life, his liberality to his friends and relations was profuse. Pitt himself was indebted to Temple for pecuniary assistance, and on his dismissal from the post of pay-master-general Temple entreated his sister to persuade her husband to ‘give his brother Temple leave to become his debtor for a thousand pounds a year 'till better times’ (Grenville Papers, i. 408). To Wilkes too he showed his generosity in bearing the expense of all his law proceedings, and thus ‘it is to Earl Temple and to him alone that the nation owes the condemnation of the general warrants and the arbitrary seizure of persons and papers’ (, Correspondence of the late John Wilkes with his Friends, 1805, i. 135). Wraxall, describing Temple in 1776, says: ‘In his person he was tall and large, though not inclined to corpulency. A disorder, the seat of which lay in his ribs, bending him almost double, compelled him in walking to use a sort of crutch; but his mind seemed exempt from decay. His conversation was animated, brilliant, and full of entertainment’ (Historical Memoirs, 1884, i. 88-9). In the satirical and political productions of the time he was known by the name of ‘Squire Gawkey.’ He married, on 19 May 1737, Anne, daughter and coheiress of Thomas Chambers of Hanworth, Middlesex, by his wife Lady Mary Berkeley, the eldest daughter of Charles, second earl of Berkeley. The only issue of the marriage was a daughter, Elizabeth, who was born on 1 Sept. 1738 and died an infant on 14 July 1742. The countess, whose ‘Select Poems’ were printed at Strawberry Hill in 1764 (, Catalogue of Royal and Noble