John Temple

“ There are such pictures that Time’s hand can not touch. And this was one of them to John Temple; the sweet girlish face glorified by the pale white beams.
When he reached the Hall dinner was over, but we may be sure the heir was not allowed to suffer by this. The butler speedily spread a tempting repast before him, but John did not feel hungry still. He lit a cigar and went out on the terrace, and there his excitement sobered down. Other scenes rose up before him; other hours of passion and love.
“I am a fool,” he reflected; “a girl’s beautiful face has made me feel like a boy.” ”

“ Temple’s death fell out of it when Webster opened the envelope. The actress had evidently written in a state of great excitement.
“Dear Mr. Webster,” he read. “The inclosed cutting from the newspaper will tell you what has occurred. This Mr. Temple, whose death it records, is the uncle of John Temple, who is his heir. John Temple is now, therefore, a rich man, and as I am unfortunately his wife, he can not prevent (I suppose) my benefiting by his accession to fortune. But though money is a great thing, an immense thing, it is not everything! ”

“ It was a short but dreary drive, and when they reached the Hall the squire asked John Temple to excuse him until dinner time.
[Pg 20]
“I feel I am unfit company for anyone,” he said, “but make yourself quite at home in the house that will be yours some day,” he added, with melancholy truth.
Thus John was at liberty to pass the time as best he could. He went to the Hall door, and looked out on the green park. It was a tempting vista. His uncle’s words not unnaturally recurred to his mind. So this was his inheritance; this wide wooded domain, this stately mansion house. ”

“ The vicar had gone home with his wife, and there was no one in the dining-room but the desolate old man.
John tried to talk to him, but he found it very difficult. When two lives have run in completely different grooves, the conversation is apt to be strained. The squire had always lived in the country, John Temple always in towns. They spoke a little on politics, and John easily perceived his uncle’s opinions were opposed to his own. ”

“ John Temple is grieving about something that has cut his heart-strings. It can’t be money in his case because for one thing he never cared very much about it, and for another he will ultimately, as Mr. Harrison described it, succeed to his uncle’s property, and with such prospects he could borrow as much as he liked, I suppose. No, it is about some woman! He was looking down into the dusky river when I first saw him. Can he have driven some poor soul to seek for refuge in its gloomy depths?”
Ralph Webster inwardly shuddered, but Kathleen Weir little thought how near she was to the truth. ”

“ In the meantime John Temple had gone to his own rooms, and for a moment stood there, panting still from his recent encounter, thinking how he should act. But his hesitation was very brief. He would go to May; in her hands alone now lay the course of their future lives.
“If she loves me as I love her, we shall not part,” he thought; “the world is wide.”
This was his decision, and he quickly acted on it. He pulled out a portmanteau, and was thrusting into it some things that he would require, when a rap sounded at his sitting-room door, and the next moment Mrs. ”

“ Late in the autumn of the same year, Sir John Temple, the first consul-general from Great Britain to the United States after their independence was recognized, was given a reception by Congress, and Wall Street was again in an ecstasy of commotion. Sir John was a native of Boston, and married the daughter of Governor Bowdoin, one of the most distinguished looking women of her day; he inherited his title from his grandfather, who lived and died in England. He resided for many years in New York, and died in New York. ”

“ Presently John broke the sweet silence that seemed like heaven to the girl’s heart.
“It will not be all smooth sailing, you know, May,” he said.
[Pg 141]
She looked up inquiringly.
“I mean,” continued John Temple, with a sort of effort, “that our marriage, for a time at least, will have to be a secret one. There are several reasons for this; one is that my uncle would oppose it, and the other that Mrs. Temple has taken a very absurd prejudice against your family on account of the death of her boy.” ”

“ Boyer, 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 Temple, Sir John] , the speaker of the Irish House of Commons, but left no issue; and Dorothy, who married Nicholas Bacon of Shrubland Hall, Coddenham. ”

“ In the morning he must be alone to dream of a book or poem; in the afternoons, about four, he was glad to æstheticize with Harding or Thompson, or abandon himself to the charm of John's aspirations.
John and he were often seen walking together, and they delighted in the Temple. The Temple is escapement from the omniscient domesticity which is so natural to England; and both were impressionable to its morning animation—the young men hurrying through the courts and cloisters, the picturesqueness of a wig and gown passing up a flight of steps. ”

“ John reached his rooms shortly before eleven o'clock. He was at once sad and happy—sad at our departure, but happy in a new-found world of delight which his admiration for Constance Temple opened to him. He was, in fact, deeply in love with her, and the full flood of a hitherto unknown passion filled him with an emotion so overwhelming that his ordinary life seemed transfigured. He moved, as it were, in an ether superior to our mortal atmosphere, and a new region of high resolves and noble possibilities spread itself before his eyes. ”

“ Temple married Phœbe, daughter of John Gayring of London, by whom he had three sons, Edmund, John, and Peter (b. 1635) . Winstanley (Loyal Martyrology, pp. 141–2) gives a poor character of Temple, as one ‘easier to be led to act anything to which the hope of profit called him,’ and considers him to have been ‘fooled by Oliver into the snare.’
The subject of this article has been confused alike with Sir Peter Temple, the contemporary baronet of Stowe [see Temple, Sir Richard, (1634–1697) ] , and with Sir Peter Temple of Stanton Bury, knt., nephew of the baronet. ”

“ Temple, a distant cousin of ours, at their house of Royston in Derbyshire, and John was desirous that Mrs. Temple should come up to Oxford and chaperone her daughter Constance and myself at the balls and various other entertainments which take place at the close of the summer term. Owing to Royston being some two hundred miles from Worth Maltravers, our families had hitherto seen little of one another, but during my present visit I had learned to love Mrs. Temple, a lady of singular sweetness of disposition, and had contracted a devoted attachment to her daughter Constance. ”

“ Temple said: "Don't be too sure of it. As I passed by the corner of the Square ten minutes ago, there was a fellow in front of Mouchem's gin-mill, a longhaired, sallow-looking pill, who was making as ugly a speech to a crowd of ruffians as I ever heard. One phrase was something like this: 'Yes, my fellow-toilers'—he looked like he had never worked a muscle in his life except his jaw-tackle,—'the time has come. The hour is at hand. The people rule. Tyranny is down. Enter in and take possession of the spoilers' gains. Algonquin Avenue is heaped with riches wrung from the sweat of the poor. ”

“ My brother seemed thoroughly to have shaken off his indisposition; and I saw my fondest hopes realised in the warm attachment which was evidently springing up between him and Miss Constance Temple.
Our visit drew near its close, and it was within a week of John's return to Oxford. Mrs. Temple celebrated the termination of the Christmas festivities by giving a ball on Twelfth-night, at which a large party were present, including most of the county families. Royston was admirably adapted for such entertainments, from the number and great size of its reception-rooms. ”

“ The place became known by the designation of Temple only after the establishment of the Order there. This was the head-quarters of the Grand Preceptors of Scotland, and became, at the suppression of the Templars, attached to the Hospital of St. John. In the 15th century, Sir William Knolls, Grand Preceptor of St. John's, obtained an Act of Parliament, changing the old name into that of the barony of St. John. But the people never conformed to the alteration. Part of the foundations of the original convent were dug up about a century ago. ”

“ Don't you think it is worth while building a Temple where such a work can be done? If life is worth anything, if salvation is worth anything, if the life of our friends and brethren with whom we shall be associated in the kingdom of God, is worth anything, then I think a good work was done in the building of this Temple. In other words, it was a wise move. Why? Because it helped to sustain this part of the country. Means were brought from other places down here to supply the people with means and labor, thus it has been a blessing both to the living and the dead. ”

“ Thomas Temple's great-grandson Peter became lessee of Stowe in Buckinghamshire, and died on 28 May 1577. He had two sons—John, who purchased Stowe on 27 Jan. 1589–90, and Anthony, father of Sir William Temple (1555–1627) [q. v.] John was succeeded by his eldest son Thomas, who was knighted in June 1603 and created a baronet on 24 Sept. 1611. He married Hester, daughter of Miles Sandys of Latimer, Buckinghamshire, by whom he had four sons. ”

“ The Templars, in addition to their amazing wealth, enjoyed vast privileges and immunities within this realm. In the reign of King John they were freed from all amerciaments in the Exchequer, and obtained the privilege of not being compelled to plead except before the king or his chief justice. King Henry the Third granted them free warren in all their demesne lands; and by his famous charter, dated the 9th of February, in the eleventh year of his reign, he confirmed to them all the donations of his predecessors and of their other benefactors ”

“ Mrs. Temple could not refuse her sanction to such a scheme; for while their mental qualities seemed eminently compatible, John was in his own right master of Worth Maltravers, and her daughter sole heiress of the Royston estates. ”

“ They professed to know the real history of Jesus Christ, and by adopting part of Jewish traditions and the stories of the Talmud, they made out that the facts related in the Gospels"--that is to say, the Gospels accepted by the orthodox Church--"were only allegories of which St. John gives the key."198
But it is time to pass from legend to facts. For the whole story of the initiation of the Templars by the "Johannites" rests principally on the documents produced by the Ordre du Temple in 1811. ”

“ These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.
Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man. ”

“ Indeed there is no theme that engages the human mind, and that reaches into the innermost recesses thereof as does Temple building, and the ideas associated with that work and the purposes for which they are used. ”

“ When you build it yourselves, you have a right there. You are called to be Saviors upon Mount Zion, and it is one of your privileges, of which we would not deprive you, to build a Temple to the Lord, in order that people may be saved therein." And it is not the men that wear the best clothes that are doing the work. ”

“ It is reserved for us to do a work for those who have passed away, who have not obeyed or had the Gospel in their lifetime. We are here to do a work connected with the redemption of the dead. When the Temple was commanded to be built in Nauvoo, after the Temple had been built in Kirtland, and after so many keys had been turned, and after so many manifestations, visions and ministrations had been had, yet it was said then that there was not a place upon the earth in which to perform the ordinance of baptism for the dead, and Joseph was commanded to build a house for that purpose. ”

“ The building rock at your command is of the very best, and it is easily procured; what remains for you to do is to put the material together in such a shape as shall reflect your best judgment and intelligence consistent with due regard to health and convenience. The building of the Temple here will no doubt have a tendency to awaken the desire on your part to improve in this direction. I have noticed that the building of our Temples affords a great many young men the opportunity of learning trades which perhaps, otherwise would not be the case ”

“ This is the greatest honor that could be conferred on us—to build a Temple to the name of the Most High God, and your children after you will be proud that their fathers were engaged in such a work, in building a Temple wherein thousands can receive their endowments. The adverse circumstances in which this work was done will not be thought of. The young man takes his ox goad in his hand, and becomes a Missionary to redeem the poor from bondage and bring them here to participate with us in the blessings of Zion ”