Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
NameSir William TEMPLE, 12446
Birth1555
Death1627
Spouses
Unmarried
ChildrenJohn , 12443 (1660-1677)
 Thomas , 12447
Notes for Sir William TEMPLE
Sir William Temple (1555–1627) was an English Ramist logician and fourth Provost of Trinity College, Dublin.
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He was educated at Eton College, and passed with a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, in 1573. In 1576 he was elected a fellow of King's, and graduated B.A. in 1577-8 and M.A. in 1581.[1] Though destined for the law, he became a tutor in logic at his college. "In his logic readings," wrote a pupil, Anthony Wotton, in his Runne from Rome (1624), "he always laboured to fit his pupils for the true use of that art rather than for vain and idle speculations." He accepted with enthusiasm the logical methods and views of Petrus Ramus, and became the most active champion of the Ramists in England.

Ramist controversies

In 1580 he replied in print to an impeachment of Ramus's position by Everard Digby. Adopting the pseudonym "Franciscus Mildapettus of Navarre" (Ramus had studied in youth at the Parisian Collège de Navarre), he issued a tract against Digby.[3] The work was dedicated to Philip Howard, 1st Earl of Arundel, whose acquaintance Temple had made while the earl was studying at Cambridge. Digby replied with great heat next year, and Temple retorted with a volume published under his own name. This he again dedicated to his patron the Earl of Arundel, and he announced his identity with Mildapettus.[4] He appended to the volume an elaborate epistle addressed to another Ramist, Johannes Piscator of Strasburg, professor at Herborn Academy.[2]
Temple's contributions to the controversy attracted notice abroad, and this volume was reissued at Frankfort in 1584. Meanwhile in 1582 Temple had concentrated his efforts on Piscator's writings, and he published in 1582 a second letter to Piscator with the latter's full reply.[5]
In 1581, Temple had supplicated for incorporation as M.A. at Oxford, and soon afterwards he left Cambridge to take up the office of master of the Lincoln grammar school. In 1584 he published an annotated edition of Ramus's Dialectics. It was published at Cambridge by Thomas Thomas,[disambiguation needed] the university printer, and is said to have been the first book that issued from the university press.[6] A further reply to Piscator was appended. The dedication was to Sir Philip Sidney. In the same year Temple contributed a long preface, in which he renewed with spirit the war on Aristotle, to the Disputatio de prima simplicium et concretorum corporum generatione, by a fellow Ramist, James Martin of Dunkeld, professor of philosophy at Turin. This also came from Thomas's press at Cambridge: it was republished at Frankfort in 1589. In the same place there was issued in 1591 a severe criticism of both Martin's argument and Temple's preface by an Aristotelian, Andreas Libavius, in his Quaestionum Physicarum controversarum inter Peripateticos et Rameos Tractatus (Frankfort, 1591).[2]
[edit]Secretary

Temple's writings attracted the attention of Sir Philip Sidney, to whom the edition of Ramus's Dialectics was dedicated in 1584, and Sidney invited Temple to become his secretary in November 1585, when he was appointed governor of Flushing. He was with Sidney during his fatal illness in the autumn of the following year, and his master died in his arms (17 October 1586). Sidney left him by will an annuity of £30.[2]
Temple's services were next sought successively by William Davison, the queen's secretary, and Sir Thomas Smith, clerk of the privy council. But about 1594 he joined the household of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and for many years performed secretarial duties for the earl in conjunction with Anthony Bacon, Henry Cuff, and Sir Henry Wotton. In 1597 he was, by Essex's influence, returned to parliament as member for Tamworth in Staffordshire.[2]

He seems to have accompanied Essex to Ireland in 1599, and to have returned with him next year. When Essex was engaged in organising his rebellion in London in the winter of 1600-1, Temple was still in his service, but he protested in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, written after Essex's arrest, that he was kept in complete ignorance of the plot. Temple's fortunes were prejudiced by Essex's fall. Sir Robert Cecil is said to have viewed him with marked disfavour.[2]

Consequently, despairing of success in political affairs, Temple turned anew to literary study. In 1605 he brought out, with a dedication to Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, A Logicall Analysis of Twentye Select Psalmes performed by W. Temple.[7] He is apparently the person named Temple for whom Bacon vainly endeavoured, through Thomas Murray of the privy chamber, to procure the honour of knighthood in 1607-8.

Provost

On 14 November 1609 he was made provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, the chancellor of the university, was induced to assent to the nomination at the request of James Ussher.[2]

He was appointed a master in chancery at Dublin on 31 Jan. 1609-10, and he was returned to the Irish House of Commons as member for Dublin University in April 1613. He represented that constituency till his death.[2]

Temple proved himself an efficient administrator of both college and university, attempting to bring them into conformity at all points with the educational system in vogue at Cambridge. Many of his innovations became features of the academic organisation of Dublin. By careful manipulation of the revenues of the college he increased the number of fellows from four to sixteen, and the number of scholars from twenty-eight to seventy. The fellows he was the first to divide into two classes, making seven of them senior fellows, and nine of them junior. The general government of the institution he entrusted to the senior fellows. He instituted many other administrative offices, to each of which he allotted definite functions, and his scheme of college offices remained unchanged for many years.[2]

He drew up new statutes for both the college and the university, and endeavoured to obtain from James I a new charter, extending the privileges which Queen Elizabeth had granted in 1595. He was in London from May 1616 to May 1617 seeking to induce the government to accept his proposals, but his efforts failed.[2]

His tenure of the office of provost was not altogether free from controversy. He defied the order of Archbishop George Abbot that he and his colleagues should wear surplices in chapel. He insisted that as a layman he was entitled to dispense with that formality. Privately he was often in pecuniary difficulties, from which he sought to extricate himself by alienating the college estates to his wife and other relatives.[2]
Temple was knighted by the lord-deputy, Sir Oliver St. John on 4 May 1622, and died at Trinity College, Dublin, on 15 Jan. 1626-7, being buried in the old college chapel (since pulled down). At the date of his death negotiations were begun for his resignation owing to 'his age and weakness' His will, dated 21 December 1626, is preserved in the public record office at Dublin.[8] He possessed much land in Ireland.[2]

Family

His wife Martha, daughter of Robert Harrison, of a Derbyshire family, was sole executrix. By her Temple left two sons, Sir John Temple, afterwards Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and Thomas with three daughters, Catharine, Mary, and Martha. The second son, Thomas, fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, became rector of Old Ross, in the diocese of Ferns, on 6 March 1626-7. He subsequently achieved a reputation as a puritan preacher in London, where he exercised his ministry at Battersea from 1641 onwards. He preached before the Long parliament, and was a member of the Westminster Assembly.[2]
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