Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/56

 by his special direction was buried in a silver box under a sundial in the garden of Moor Park, opposite his favourite window seat. With his death the baronetcy became extinct.

By his will, dated 8 March 1694–5, and made ‘as short as possible to avoid those cruel remembrances that have so often occasioned the changing of it,’ Temple left a lease of some lands in Morristown to ‘Esther Johnson, servant to my sister Giffard,’ and, by a codicil dated 2 April 1697, 100l. to ‘William Dingley, my cousin, student at Oxford, and another 100l. to Mr. Jonathan Swift, now dwelling with me’ (will proved by Sir John Temple and Dame Martha Giffard, 29 March 1699, P.C.C. 50 Pett). To Swift also was left such profit as might accrue from the publication of a collective edition of Temple's ‘Works.’ Of this edition two volumes of letters appeared in 1700 (London, 8vo), a third volume in 1703; the ‘Miscellanies’ or essays, in three parts, 1705–8; the ‘Introduction’ in 1708; and the ‘Memoirs’ in two volumes, 1709 (pt. ii., of which ‘unauthorised’ editions had appeared in 1691–2, related to the period 1672–9; pt. iii., of which the autograph manuscript is in the British Museum Addit. MS. 9804, written in a rapid script with scarcely a correction, dealt with 1679–80; part i. was thrown into the fire by Temple shortly before his death). Subsequent collective editions appeared in 1720, 2 vols. fol.; 1723; 1731, with preliminary notice by Lady Giffard, who was profoundly dissatisfied with Swift's handling of her brother's literary legacy; 1740; 1754, 4 vols. 8vo; 1757, 1770, and 1814.

Lady Temple, whom the statesman had married in 1655, was born at Chicksands in 1627, and was one of the younger daughters of Sir Peter Osborne (1584–1653), the royalist defender of Castle Cornet in Guernsey [see ]. Francis Osborne [q. v.], the writer, was her uncle, and Admiral Henry Osborne [q. v.] her nephew. Her mother, Dorothy (1590–1650), was sister of Sir John Danvers [q. v.] and daughter of Sir John Danvers of Dauntsey, Wiltshire. The story of her deepening attachment to Temple, of the loss of her beauty by smallpox, of her wifely gentleness, and of the position of comparative inferiority that she occupied in the Temple household to her clever and managing sister-in-law, Lady Giffard, is well known to every reader of Macaulay's brilliant essay. She was an active helpmeet to Temple in many of his schemes, showed dauntless courage upon her voyage to England in 1671, when an affray with the Dutch flagship seemed imminent (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1670–1), and enjoyed the cordial friendship of Queen Mary, whose death almost synchronised with her own. She died at Moor Park, aged 65, and was buried on 7 Feb. 1694–5 in Westminster Abbey. Extracts from forty-two of her letters to Temple were published by Courtenay in his ‘Life of Temple.’ Macaulay was powerfully attracted by their charm, which is, however, personal rather than literary, and the complete series of seventy was published in 1888 (ed. E. A. Parry). The original letters, amounting in all to 135 folios, were purchased by the British Museum on 16 Feb. 1891 from R. Bacon Longe, esq., and now form Addit. MS. 33975.

Besides several children who died in infancy, the Temples had a daughter Diana, who died in 1679, aged 14, and was buried in Westminster Abbey; and a son, John Temple (d. 1689), to whom they were both much devoted. He was in Paris in 1684 when an official diploma of nobility was granted to him under the common seal of the college of arms in order to insure his proper reception in foreign courts (this curious document, which is in Latin, is printed in the ‘Herald and Genealogist,’ iii. 406–8). As a compliment to his father, John Temple was made paymaster-general, and, on 12 April 1689, secretary-at-war in the room of Mr. Blaithwaite. A few days later, having filled his pockets with stones, he threw himself from a boat into the strong current beneath London Bridge, and was drowned (see, Chronicles of London Bridge, 1827, pp. 474–5). The suicide, which created the greatest sensation at the time, was probably due to official anxiety, aggravated by the treachery of a confidential agent whom he had recommended to the king (, Mém. de la Révolution, ii. 290;, p. 458; , i. 524; , Life of Temple, p. 415). By his wife Mary Duplessis, daughter of M. Duplessis Rambouillet, of a good Huguenot family, he left two daughters: Elizabeth of Moor Park, who married her cousin, John Temple (d. 1753), second son of Sir John [see under ], the speaker of the Irish House of Commons, but left no issue; and Dorothy, who married Nicholas Bacon of Shrubland Hall, Coddenham.

Of public men who have left behind them any claim to a place near the front rank, Temple is one of the ‘safest’ in our annals. Halifax may well have had his exemplary friend in mind when he wrote the maxim ‘He that leaveth nothing to chance will do