Temple Sir William

Temple, SIR WILLIAM (1628-99), statesman, diplomatist, and man of letters, was born in London. His father, SIR JOHN TEMPLE (d. 1677), was Master of the Rolls in Ireland. After studying at Cambridge he travelled in France, Spain, Holland, and Germany, joining his father in Ireland on his return (1654). He sat in the Irish Parliament of 1661, but removed to England in 1663, and two years later was despatched on a secret mission to the Bishop of Munster, His services were rewarded with a baronetcy, and he soon returned to the continent as Eng1ish representative at Brussels (1665). In 1668 he negotiated the Triple Alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden, to resist the aggression of France, and a few months later became ambassador at The Hague, but was recalled when his work had already been undone by tbe secret Treaty of Dover (1670), and was finally dismissed in ]671. After bringing about the Treaty of Westminster (1674), which put an end to the war with the Dutch, he went a second time to The Hague, and took a leading part in the negotiations which resulted in the Treaty of Nimeguen (1678}. His diplomatic career closed with his return from the Netherlands in 1679, but he was still an influential politician. At his suggestion Charles II. formed a Privy Council of thirty members on a new scheme, the real business of which soon fell into the hands of Temple and three others. Disgusted at the king's faithlessness and the venality of polltlclans, he withdrew to his villa at Sheen, and in 1686 settled at Moor Park in Surrey, where he died. He wrote Observations on the United Provinces, two volumes of Miscellanies, and Memoirs.