LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 .Qxfevi. 
 
 IryrA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Class 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 THE STANHOPE ESSAY 
 
 1908 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD S. LYTTEL 
 
 University College 
 
 'Exeat aula 
 Qui vult esse plus.' 
 
 LUCAN. 
 
 OF / 
 
 OXFORD 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, 50 & 51, BROAD STREET 
 
 LONDON 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO.. LIMITED 
 
 1908 
 

 a\' 
 
 
 L^ 
 
 ^ 
 
/ 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The writer of this essay wishes to record his gratitude 
 for the generous assistance in the form of corrections 
 and suggestions which he has received from Richard 
 Lodge, M.A., LL.D., Professor of History in the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh, formerly Fellow of Brasenose College, 
 Oxford. 
 
 University College. 
 Oxford, 
 
 June, 1908. 
 
 170042 
 
ERSiTY 
 
 OF 
 
 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 * Fame, at the which he aims — 
 In whom already he's well graced — cannot 
 Better be held, nor more attain'd, than by 
 A place below the first.' — Coriolanus. 
 
 Of the famous names which are lastingly inscribed on 
 the long and glorious roll of British statesmen, some 
 will invite us to conjure up pictures of men who claim 
 an additional meed of admiration because, in their climb 
 to the Temple of Fame, they had to conquer great 
 difficulties and to dare great dangers. Other names, 
 again, will be represented by figures which stand out less 
 clearly in the historical pageant because they to some 
 extent failed to surmount the adverse conditions of their 
 times, or because they were overshadowed by their 
 contemporaries. 
 
 In the latter class we may include the subject of our 
 essay. Sir William Temple had many great qualities, 
 but in the picture of his times he appears as a rather 
 dim and expressionless figure, which is apt to sink into 
 grey insignificance behind the lurid hues of a Charles II., 
 the chiaroscuro of a Shaftesbury, or the splendour of a 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 He loses, too, rather than gains, by closer examination. 
 His name is connected in history with important 
 
 I 
 
2 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 political events ; but these not only depended really on 
 the dominant policy of bigger, if less high-principled, men, 
 but by their very fugitive nature they robbed him of 
 some of the glamour which attends a lasting success. He 
 was the diplomatic agent for the Triple Alliance, and it 
 failed. He was sent to Nimeguen, and the result was a 
 hoUow and uncertain peace. He helped to plan a new 
 Privy Council, and it was but the plaything of an hour. 
 It is true that in none of these cases was the failure 
 entirely, or even partly, due to himself; but the fact 
 that they did fail makes him appear as rather an in- 
 effective figure, even if his ineffectiveness was caused 
 chiefly by the chicanery of a Stuart or the ambition of a 
 Grand Monarch. 
 
 Yet his work had its value — and no small value — in 
 the promises it held for posterity. The Triple Alliance 
 failed, but it created a precedent which has lived and 
 worked wonders. The Privy Council failed, but it 
 helped the growth of our Constitution by marking what 
 was then its weakest point. His literary work was not 
 epoch-making, but in very essential details it opened 
 out new possibilities and new beauties. 
 
 In this partial success and partial failure we may see 
 an index to Temple's character and abilities. He had 
 many of the qualities which the future admired : he 
 lacked some which the present demanded. In some 
 respects he was a remarkable figure among the states- 
 men of his generation : in others he dwindled into 
 insignificance. He had something modern in his char- 
 acter, as in his prose. He lived fastidiously, and 
 practised unfashionable virtues. He was courteous in 
 manner, tactful and persuasive in speech, prudent and 
 sagacious in business, wise in the knowledge of the times, 
 and adroit in choosing the right moment to press forward 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 3 
 
 or to stand aside. He was, therefore, well qualified to 
 excel as a diplomat, and he did excel. If he owed to 
 good fortune the opportunity of identifying himself with 
 the more respectable treaties in the reign of Charles II., 
 he owed to his own good qualities the smoothness and 
 rapidity with which those treaties were effected. If he 
 had retired when his diplomatic career was ended, he 
 would have been saved many heartburnings and many 
 censures. 
 
 But he allowed himself to be drawn into the troubled 
 field of domestic politics, and here the weak side of his 
 character showed itself. He was loyal, but his loyalty 
 was passive rather than active. He was faithful, but 
 his faith lacked enthusiasm. He had the refined nature 
 that shrinks from factions, and the sensitive nature that 
 recoils from rebuffs. He had the contempt of a culti- 
 vated and enlightened man for fanaticism, and was not 
 one to risk his comfort for a creed, his good name for a 
 principle, or his head for a party. 
 
 In his intermittent appearances amid the intrigues 
 of foreign politics he commands our admiration. In his 
 brief and unhappy appearance in domestic politics his 
 timidity and caution cause that admiration to be 
 tinged with a feeling which is almost contempt. 
 
 1—2 
 
' The behaviour of the yoimg gentleman gives him out to be of 
 good capacity and breeding.' — Tweljth Night. 
 
 Those who seek to trace the influence of heredity in 
 determining characteristics of thought and action may 
 perceive in Temple's ancestors men who would be likely 
 to transmit to their descendant unassuming but constant 
 feelings of loyalty, moderate political views, a respect- 
 able degree of eminence, and an honest love of a country 
 life refined by a not unworthy amount of literary taste 
 and skill. 
 
 His family were what we should now call ' county 
 folk,' who ' pretended to most ancient nobility." ^ His 
 grandfather was a scholar and philosopher, secretary to 
 Sir Philip Sidney, and Provost of Trinity College, 
 Dublin ; his father, Sir John Temple, was Master of the 
 Rolls in Ireland, a distinguished member of the Privy 
 Council at Dublin, and the author of a History of the 
 Irish Rebellion. Sir John joined the popular side in 
 1640, was imprisoned for opposing~^he Cessation, re- 
 gained his liberty by exchange, and sat as a ' recruit ' in 
 the Long Parliament. He voted with the Moderate 
 party ; he was with them ' secluded ' by the high- 
 handed action of Colonel Pride ; and he finally returned 
 to a more settled Ireland, to hold once more his post as 
 Master of the Rolls, and to sit as a representative of 
 
 1 ' Life of Sir William Temple,' by Lady Giffard, prefixed to 
 the 1 73 1 edition of his Works. 
 
 4 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 5 
 
 County Carlow in the Irish Parliament. He married the 
 sister of Dr. Hammond, a celebrated divine, and their 
 eldest son, the future statesman and author, was born 
 at Blackfriars in London in the year 1628. 
 
 William Temple received his early education at Pens- 
 hurst, in Kent, under the care of his uncle, Dr. Henry 
 Hammond, and at the age of ten was sent to school at 
 Bishop's S tort ford, where he learnt all the Latin and the 
 very little Greek he ever knew. The standard of learn- 
 ing at this establishment does not appear to have been 
 very high, for at the age of fifteen he had * attained to 
 all that was to be learned there,' ^ and returned home to 
 wait till the violence of the Civil War had sufficiently 
 abated to allow him safely to go to a University. In 
 1644 he was entered as a fellow-commoner of Emmanuel 
 College, Cambridge, where he remained for two years. 
 He was under the care of the celebrated Cudworth, the 
 author of ' The Intellectual System of the Universe '; but 
 he appears to have devoted his attention more to tennis 
 than to philosophy, and left the University without a 
 degree, and with even less knowledge of Greek than he 
 had before. 
 
 England in 1648 was a dismal place for a Royalist, and 
 Temple soon started to travel on the Continent. On 
 his way to France he passed through the Isle of Wight, 
 where Charles I. was still confined as a prisoner, and 
 there met, and made friends with, the son and daughter 
 of Sir Peter Osborne, an ardent Royalist who had 
 earned a small niche in the Temple of Fame by his 
 dogged defence for the King of Castle Cornet, in Guernsey. 
 Dorothy and her brother were equally warm partisans 
 of royalty, and the latter amused himself by writing on a 
 
 ^ ' Life of Sir William Temple,' by Lady Giffard, prefixed to 
 the 1 73 1 edition of his Works. 
 
6 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 window-pane of the inn his opinion of the ruling powers : 
 ' And Haman was hanged on the gallows they had pre- 
 pared for Mordecai.' For this act of malignancy the 
 party were arrested and brought before the Governor; 
 but Dorothy, with ready wit, and a singular trust in the 
 gallantry of a Roundhead, took the offence upon her- 
 self, and was immediately set at liberty, with her fellow- 
 travellers. This incident made a deep impression on 
 Temple. Dorothy was young, of much personal attrac- 
 tion — though in her letters she often naively wishes she 
 were more handsome — and her companion's admiration 
 quickly ripened into love. We have no account of how 
 the courtship progressed, or whether Temple had become 
 her ' servant ' — as the phrase went — before he parted 
 from her and proceeded on his travels ; but when he 
 returned to London, after spending two years in seeing 
 France, the Netherlands, and Germany, and in acquiring 
 a competent knowledge of the French and Spanish lan- 
 guages, he corresponded with Mistress Osborne as an 
 accepted lover. But the course of their love did not 
 run at all smoothly. Dorothy's father was a Royalist ; 
 Sir John Temple had been sitting in the Long Parlia- 
 ment ; and even when the war ended objections came 
 from both families, for the Osbornes were violently set 
 against a marriage with a comparatively poor man, and 
 Temple's father also had a more advantageous alliance 
 in view for his son. In spite of opposition, however, the 
 correspondence continued. Temple's letters have, un- 
 fortunately, been lost, but Dorothy's have been pre- 
 served, and the course of the long and arduous wooing 
 can be traced in the delightful collection which has 
 been given to the world. We learn how her brother 
 Henry was especially vehement in his opposition ; how 
 he gave her ' a pretty lecture, and I grew warm with 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 7 
 
 it '; how he finally made a personal attack on the re- 
 ligious opinions which Temple's turn for philosophical 
 inquiry had made suspect, and how ' I forgot all my 
 disguise, and we talked ourselves weary ; he renounced 
 me again, and I defied him.' We learn how she was 
 tempted by a succession of more wealthy suitors, and 
 how near she was to high places by being wooed by her 
 cousin Thomas Osborne, afterwards Earl of Danby ; and 
 by Henry Cromwell, who gave her an Irish greyhound, 
 won her cordial liking by the bright and courteous de- 
 meanour which gained for him the title of a ' debauched, 
 ungodly Cavalier ' ^ from that strict Presbyterian Mrs. 
 Hutchinson, flattered her vanity by offering her the 
 addresses of a son of the Protector, but altogether failed 
 to win her from her constancy to Temple. 
 
 These letters, however, do more than give us an 
 account of a troubled courtship. They have a charm of 
 their own ; they give us pleasant glances at the social 
 customs and manners of the time, and present a very 
 attractive picture of Dorothy herself. They are written 
 in an easily flowing and sprightly style, which is a de- 
 lightful contrast to that of the rugged, harsh, and in- 
 volved epistles of most of the writer's contemporaries, 
 and they combine the subtle and quaint charm that 
 lingers about old letters with the spirit and freshness of 
 letters written yesterday. In them Dorothy passes 
 lightly over all kinds of topics, and is by turns tender, 
 serious, wise, gay, and satirical ; at one moment in tears 
 over the cruelty of a brother, at the next laughing 
 over the recollection of an absurd sermon ; here giving 
 us a dainty picture of Chicksands and its * common that 
 lies hard by the house, where a great many young 
 
 1 'Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson,' vol. ii., p. 203 (Firth's 
 edition). 
 
8 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade 
 singing of ballads '; there a demure lecture on the duties 
 of a husband : while a good deal of gossip, a little scandal, 
 some coquettish raillery, and a few blushes at the terrible 
 word ' love,' are mingled in most admired confusion with 
 some unpretentious but practical philosophy, and a few 
 very earnest and sincere thoughts on religion. There 
 is not a dull letter in the whole collection, and alto- 
 gether they give us a living portrait of a very sprightly 
 and lovable girl — modest, affectionate, generous, sym- 
 pathetic, and womanly — who was generally cheerful, 
 always intelligent, and never ill-natured. 
 
 The majority of the letters were addressed to Temple 
 in London, where he seems to have spent his time in the 
 usual round of town gaieties ; but as Dorothy laughingly 
 twits him as ' a young man whose head is so taken up 
 with little philosophical studies, that I admire how I 
 found room there,' he evidently found time for a good 
 deal of solid reading. He appears to have been a faith- 
 ful and ardent lover — almost too ardent for Dorothy's 
 somewhat prim notions — and his constancy was even- 
 tually put to a severe test ; for when the pair had at 
 length triumphed over all opposition. Mistress Osborne 
 fell ill of the small-pox, and, though she escaped with 
 life, she lost all her good looks. But the writer of such 
 letters as Temple had received had other beauties than 
 those of face and form by which to hold the affections of 
 a man of his character, and the faithful lovers were at 
 last united in 1654. 
 
 In the following year they went to Ireland, where they 
 lived alternately at Sir John's house in Dublin and on an 
 estate in Carlow. Here Temple spent his time chiefly 
 in reading, gardening, and, ' to please his wife,' in 
 writing some indifferent verses and translations. He 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 9 
 
 was anxious to enter public life, and his travels had 
 given him a taste for, and some knowledge of, foreign 
 politics ; but — to quote his own words — ' the native love 
 of my country and its ancient constitutions would not 
 suffer me to enter into public affairs till the way was 
 open for the King's happy restoration.'^ 
 
 When his wish was realized, and Charles Stuart sat 
 once more on the throne of his ancestors. Temple joined 
 his father in the Irish Parliament, where he seems to 
 have displayed moderate powers of eloquence, but a 
 ' tongue persuasive as a woman's,' a useful asset for a 
 future diplomat. He was soon, however, to gain a 
 wider sphere for his powers, and we must now briefly 
 describe the state of politics which he found on his 
 arrival in England in 1663. 
 
 *"" Dedication of Memoirs [Works, i. ^y^ {1720).] 
 [N.B. — Future references to Temple's works will be marked 
 ' T. W.' and will refer to the folio edition, in two vols., of 1720.] 
 
II 
 
 ' The world has seen 
 A type of peace.' 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 The year 1660 saw Charles II. welcomed with a frenzy 
 of loyalty by the Royalists, who greeted his restoration 
 as the triumph of the old order over the Sectary, the 
 Democrat, and the Republican. The year of Temple's 
 arrival in England saw the ' Cavalier Parliament ' leading 
 the way in the long struggle which was to end only in 
 the third great charter of our liberties ; which was to 
 give new definitions to the terms * Prerogative ' and 
 ' Parliament '; which was to transfer a large share of the 
 sovereign power wielded by Cromwell's political army 
 from Whitehall to Westminster ; and which was to prove 
 that there was no room in England for a second Charles I., 
 a second Strafford, or a second Laud. 
 
 The struggle was a hard one, for the restored monarch 
 was a true Stuart. He was, indeed, above all things, 
 determined never to ' go on his travels again ' ; but, 
 behind ministerial cat's-paws, he aimed at that Catholic 
 despotism which was then considered to be the ideal 
 polity in the greatest Continental nations. He had to 
 inspire him two great examples of autocratic power — in 
 Cromwell, with his glorious government by means of a 
 standing army ; and in Louis XIV., with his magnificent 
 absolutism established on the ruins of the Fronde. His 
 cousin in France was also a Catholic, as well as an 
 autocrat, and Catholicism was the religion of his mother. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE ii 
 
 of his well-loved sister, and of the Courts at which he 
 had spent the greater part of his exile. Small wonder, 
 then, that Charles, as a man, was always — at any rate, 
 potentially — a Papist ; as an English King, was eager 
 for Catholic toleration, till the Test Acts taught him the 
 hopelessness of his attempts ;^ and, as a European 
 monarch, was always inclined to an alliance with France 
 rather than with Protestant Holland. Small wonder that 
 the struggle between the Executive and a Legislature 
 that had not yet forgotten the Gunpowder Plot was but 
 accentuated by religious differences. And Parliament's 
 first step towards limiting the King's power only forced 
 him into a position where his plots against Church and 
 State became still more dangerous. The abolition of the 
 old feudal dues had fulfilled its object in weakening the 
 idea of the King's Prerogative, but the substitution of 
 an inadequate revenue, by men who were ignorant of 
 finance,^ not only made a desire for money the one 
 constant factor in a policy which, in other respects, 
 Charles often pursued lazily and intermittently, but it 
 drove him into the arms of a monarch who would be 
 more likely to help the cause of kingly power than the 
 cause of constitutional and religious liberty. 
 
 But when Temple appeared on the scene in 1663, the 
 struggle which was to colour the whole of the reign of 
 Charles II. was as yet only outlined in men's minds. 
 The alliance with France had, indeed, been foreshadowed, 
 
 1 t lis a moot question whether Charles' final decision to 
 abandon any overt action in favour of the Roman Catholics 
 dates from the Test Act in 1673, or from the Popish Plot and 
 ' Disabling Act ' of 1678. The majority of historians favour 
 the first date. 
 
 2 Pepys was assured by Sir Philip Warwick, Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, that the revenue fell short by a fourth of the 
 ;£ 1, 200,000 voted by Parliament (Diary, March i, 1664). 
 
12 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 but at present the aim of Charles was rather against 
 Holland than against his Parliament ■; for he had a very 
 clear insight into the commercial needs of his people, 
 and realized that the destruction of the Dutch Republic 
 would mean the undisputed predominance of the navy, 
 which had been brought into such prominence by 
 Blake — the predominance of England as the greatest 
 commercial nation of the world, and the growth of her 
 power beyond the seas. This aim, to his credit be it 
 said, he kept constantly before him in his dealing with 
 Louis — at any rate, during the first part of his reign. 
 
 It was in connection with England's renewed strife 
 with her great trade rival that Temple first appeared on 
 the diplomatic stage. He had remained quietly in 
 Ireland while the Restoration was being bloodlessly 
 effected ; while the Bill of Indemnity was kept within 
 the spirit of the Declaration of Breda, by the efforts of 
 Charles and Clarendon ; while the * lion ' of military 
 Republicanism ' sprawled its last ' in the rising of the 
 Fifth Monarchy Men; and while the Corporation Act 
 began the list of Anglican measures which were to stifle 
 desires for comprehension or toleration. He would have 
 followed with the peculiar interest of a student of foreign 
 politics the birth of a new Anglo-French agreement in 
 the Portuguese marriage, and the sale of Dunkirk ; and 
 the first signs of a reversal of the traditional Stuart 
 policy of non-intervention in Europe by a King who had 
 come to his throne without foreign complications or 
 foreign assistance, but who had thus early begun to give 
 up his ready-made isolation. 
 
 When the Irish Parliament was prorogued in 1663, 
 Temple removed to England, and settled with his family 
 and his widowed sister. Lady Giffard, at Sheen, where 
 he spent a large part of his time in his favourite hobby of 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 13 
 
 fruit-growing. Ormonde, who seems to have had a 
 lasting affection for ' the only man in Ireland who never 
 asked him for anything,' had given him letters of intro- 
 duction to Clarendon and Arlington ; but it was not 
 till two years later that the Dutch war supplied an 
 occasion for his first diplomatic mission. 
 
 It was not, however, with Holland alone that foreign 
 complications had arisen. The Peace of Westphalia had 
 marked the beginning of a new phase in European 
 history — the beginning of a long period of French aggres- 
 sion. The Continent had been dominated by a Haps- 
 burg : it was now to be terrorized by a Bourbon. The 
 proud Spaniards, by their racial spirit of individualism 
 and self-sacrificing obstinacy, had enabled their country 
 to impose herself on Europe for many years after the 
 basis of her ephemeral power had decayed ; but — though 
 she was still suffering from that ruinous popular obses- 
 sion which made her, like Don Quixote, blind to the 
 realities of life, to her national poverty, impotence, and 
 ignorance ^ — her glory had in reality departed ; her 
 armies had been shattered at Rocroy and Nordlingen ;^ 
 she had been forced to abandon her struggle with the 
 United Provinces ; and Portugal, whose unwilling union 
 under the Hapsburgs had marked the zenith of her 
 fortunes, was to mark their nadir at the battle of Villa 
 Viciosa. The other branch of the Hapsburgs also was 
 but a shadow of its former self : for the Empire had prac- 
 tically disappeared ; it had become a lax confederation 
 
 ^ Cf. ' The National Significance of " Don Quixote," ' by 
 Major Martin Hume {Fortnightly Review, October, 1907). 
 
 2 August 3, 1645, when Enghien defeated Mercy. The first 
 and more famous battle of Nordlingen was fought on September 6, 
 1634, when the Emperor beat the Swedes under Bernhard of 
 Saxe-Weimar and Horn. 
 
14 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 of small despotisms, with little or no nexus of national 
 feeling ; and it had in Sweden a victorious enemy who 
 controlled the mouths of two of its great rivers and 
 commanded two votes in its councils. And the peace 
 which marked the decline of Spain also marked the first 
 triumph in the advance of France. The frontier policy 
 of Richelieu, by which Paris was to be made strategically 
 as well as historically the centre of France, had resulted 
 in a successful struggle for the Rhine, for the razor's edge 
 on which have hung suspended the issues of war and 
 peace for nearly 250 years, and of which the danger is 
 still acute. ^ But the way to the second great frontier 
 objective was still blocked by the Spanish Netherlands. 
 A step in the right direction had been gained at the ' Pax 
 Infida ' of 1659 ; but, as Bourbon had contended with 
 Hapsburg for the Rhine, so France, in trying to win her 
 way to the Scheldt, was to be confronted, during thirty 
 3^ears of intrigue and war, by the United Provinces. 
 
 At present, indeed, there was peace between the two 
 countries, for Louis XIV. realized that an Anglo-Dutch 
 war was inevitable ; and, though he was anxious to see 
 Holland weak, he was also anxious that England should 
 not become too strong. But, though he was even per- 
 suaded by De Witt to make a treaty with the United 
 Provinces, the time was almost ripe for the war of 
 devolution ; and French influences and the danger of 
 French ambitions loomed large on the political horizon 
 when Temple went on his first diplomatic journey. 
 
 The Dutch war of 1665 was but a recrudescence of the 
 one in 1652. It was the inevitable result of a peace 
 which had left untouched the original causes of enmity, 
 and which had exacted a confession of inferiority from 
 a high-spirited people. ' France they distrust, Spain 
 
 ^ Lord Curzon on 'Frontiers' (Romanes Lecture, 1908). 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 15 
 
 they despise, but Holland they hate,' said Ruvigny of 
 his hosts ; and the English nation was driven by colonial 
 and trade jealousy towards a renewed conflict with its 
 rivals ; the English King had his own dynastic quarrel 
 with the Republic for its * Act of Exclusion '; and the 
 English navy was only too ready to be used as a stimulus 
 for war, instead of, as now, an insurance for peace. 
 
 Temple's first task was a difficult one, and it failed. 
 He lacked the experience which was necessary for coping 
 with the intrigues of able and unscrupulous opponents, 
 but he showed, even in his failure, that he had in him 
 the makings of a good diplomat, and he did well to gain 
 any credit at all out of a situation in which outside 
 influences left him almost helpless. 
 
 At the instance of Arlington, he was sent to complete 
 a treaty which Charles had secretly made with Bernard 
 von Galen, Bishop of Miinster,^ a prelate who was * only 
 considerable by his position ' on the Dutch frontier, 
 who was * unquiet and ambitious to raise a name in the 
 world,' who hated the Dutch for their support of his 
 city against him, and who had both the wealth to raise 
 an army and the military tastes to lead it.^ 
 
 By the terms of this treaty the Bishop was to attack 
 the Dutch within two months, in return for a heavy 
 
 1 This was a curious alliance between a great Power and a 
 relatively insignificant Prince of the Empire. Von Galen 
 appears to have taken the first step, and to have been bold enough 
 to hold out hopes of German hostility to Holland. As a matter 
 of fact, the Princes of the Westphalian Circle had not been 
 approached, had only recently been induced by Louis XIV. to 
 retire from an alliance with Holland against France, and were 
 from the first cold to England, and, after the first campaign, 
 openly hostile. (C/. C. Brinkmann in English Historical Review, 
 October, 1906.) 
 
 2 T. W., i. 85. 
 
i6 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 subsidy. Temple was sent to complete the details of 
 the alliance, and to hand over the money.^ He had also 
 to see that the conditions were kept, and in this he 
 was successful beyond the expectations of the English 
 Government, for the Bishop was persuaded to take 
 the offensive before the time agreed upon, and his troops 
 captured Zutphen, and overran the province of Over- 
 yssel. Louis had now to yield to the repeated en- 
 treaties of De Witt that he should fulfil the treaty of 
 1662. The French King feared to lose England and her 
 neutrality in his design on the Netherlands, but he was 
 afraid that this design might be imperilled by the 
 spreading of the war, or by the complete conquest of the 
 Republic, and he therefore sent help to the Dutch. His 
 troops, indeed, openly cursed the cause of their nominal 
 allies, and his officers successfully avoided attacking 
 the Bishop's troops ; but the prestige of the French 
 alliance so strengthened the hands of De Witt that the 
 neighbouring German Princes were induced to bring 
 pressure to bear on Munster.^ 
 
 Temple made fervid appeals to the Bishop to keep 
 faith with England,^ and finally hastened to Miinster 
 itself ; but his dangerous journey through country in- 
 fested by the troops of the hostile Princes was under- 
 taken in vain, though his account of it provides us with 
 a vivid description of the habits of his Teutonic hosts 
 
 1 Cf. Arlington's Letters, p. 9 et seq, June 22. Arlington 
 placed an exaggerated value on the Bishop's services. 
 
 2 The German Princes, both Protestant and Catholic, agreed 
 together in this case, impelled by fear of an imminent French 
 invasion, and by sympathy for Holland. (Temple to Castel 
 Rodrigo, December 2, 1665.) 
 
 3 Cf. Dryden, ' Annus Mir abilis,' stanza 7,7 — 
 
 ' Let Miinster' s prelate ever be accurst. 
 In whom we seek the German faith in vain.' 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 17 
 
 en route, who * had the most episcopal way of drinking 
 possible,' for they used a silver bell ' holding 2 quarts or 
 more,' which each guest first emptied, and then rang * to 
 show that he had played fair.'^ 
 
 On arriving at Miinster, Temple found that the Bishop 
 had already consented to the withdrawal of his troops, 
 and the harassed Ambassador had to leave secretly and 
 in haste in order to gain * some small satisfaction out of 
 the adventure'^ by intercepting part of the subsidy 
 which was on its way from England. 
 
 Temple's first official appointment thus ended in 
 failure ; but his Government seems to have been not 
 dissatisfied with his efforts in a very difficult situation,^ 
 and he was soon sent to Brussels, where he began 
 that serious diplomatic career which led him to the 
 famous but fleeting Triple Alliance. 
 
 The first Dutch war of the Restoration period was less 
 successful than the one fought under the Common- 
 wealth. England was richer, but King and people were 
 not in that complete accord which is necessary for a 
 great national undertaking. With Parliament inter- 
 fering and suspicious ; with Charles lazy and spend- 
 thrift, and — as Pepys says — * minding his pleasures and 
 nothing else ' ; with London panic-stricken by the 
 plague and in ruins after the Fire, it was an inglorious 
 treaty which was signed at Breda : inglorious not 
 because of its terms — for it gave us the ' Middle Colonies ' 
 in America, and therefore ranks with the planting of 
 Virginia and the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in our 
 colonial history — but because of the disgraceful event 
 
 1 Letter to Sir John Temple, dated Brussels, May 10, 1666. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 2 ' I am glad the farce is at an end,' wrote Arlington to 
 Temple, April 27, 1666. 
 
 2 
 
i8 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 which led to it. But the English desire for vengeance 
 on the Dutch for De Ruyter's exploit at Chatham was 
 temporarily, obscured by the pressing danger of the 
 French advance. 
 
 Louis XIV. had succeeded to the policy of the Car- 
 dinal's era, but with the additional incentive of youthful 
 ambition and of an assured position at home. No 
 longer was there a struggling Holland to protect, an 
 overbearing Spain to resist, a Conde or a Retz to subdue. 
 With home difficulties at an end, and with the posses- 
 sion of absolute power over a people who were * as little 
 considerable in the government as the children,'^ the 
 Bourbon King could devote himself to that policy of 
 territorial aggrandizement which had been foreshadowed 
 in the threatening legend inscribed on Mazarin's Rocroy 
 medal — ' Prima Finium Propagatio.' 
 
 The marriage of Louis to the eldest daughter of 
 Philip IV. had cemented the Treaty of the Pyrenees, 
 but it had also opened the way for a Bourbon claim to 
 the Spanish dominions ; for, though the marriage treaty 
 had renounced any such claims, the statecraft of 
 Mazarin had ensured a loophole by which this renuncia- 
 tion might be rendered invalid.^ 
 
 The birth of a male heir to the Spanish throne put a 
 temporary stop to Louis' designs on Madrid, but he 
 was not to be balked of his pressing desire for the 
 Scheldt frontier, and in the War of Devolution he put 
 forward a claim to the immediate sovereignty over the 
 Spanish Netherlands — a monstrous claim, which was 
 
 1 T. W.. ii. 92. 
 
 2 Mazarin procured the insertion of a clause in the contract 
 by which the validity of the renunciation should be dependent 
 on the punctual payment of the marriage dowry. The first 
 instalment had not been paid when the ceremony took place. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 19 
 
 founded on a mere local custom of land-tenure, but for 
 which Louis had a strong argument in the shape of 
 Turenne and his army.^ 
 
 With Charles Stuart secured by a secret understand- 
 ing, with Holland as his nominal ally, and with Spain 
 rendered still more helpless by a Franco-Portuguese 
 understanding, the Bourbon King had only to neutralize 
 the opposition of the Emperor before setting out to 
 * travel,' as he called it, in the country which he claimed 
 as his wife's inheritance. By the lavish expenditure of 
 gold the Princes of Mazarin's Rhine League were in- 
 duced to renew for a time their alliances with France ; 
 and, with his right flank thus protected from Austrian 
 attacks, Louis swooped down upon the defenceless Low 
 Countries, and began that advance which was to con- 
 tinue till William of Orange, as combined Dutch Stadt- 
 holder and English King, checked his career. In vain 
 Spain ignominiously freed herself from her entangle- 
 ment with Portugal, and called on Leopold to defend 
 the Netherlands, which, as part of an imperial 'circle,' 
 were nominally under his protection.^ De Gremonville 
 
 ^ The nominal claim of Louis was for part only of the 
 Spanish Netherlands — i.e., for Brabant in particular, and for a 
 few other places, such as Antwerp, Malines, and Limburg. The 
 local custom in these districts in regard to private property was 
 founded on the ' Jus Devolutionis,' by which rights of succession 
 went to the children, male or female, of the * first bed,' to the 
 exclusion of those of the second. Hainault was similarly claimed 
 for the first family on the ground of its special custom, while 
 feudally a third of Franche - Comte was held to belong to the 
 Queen of France. Luxemburg, again, had its own custom, by 
 which a son had two shares, the other children the remainder. 
 Of this Duchy therefore, the Queen could claim one quarter. 
 {vide Kitchin, ' France,' iii. 167). 
 
 2 By the Treaty of Miinster, October 24, 1648, the 'Circle' 
 of Burgundy was to remain a member of the Empire after the 
 
 2—2 
 
20 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 — perhaps the ablest of the French Ambassadors — was 
 equal to the occasion, and the Emperor was persuaded 
 by the use of diplomacy, not unmixed with downright 
 lying, to agree to a treaty for the partition of the Spanish 
 dominions. With Holland, too, Louis had come to an 
 understanding ; for, in view of the general excitement of 
 Europe at his advance, and in return for the assurance 
 of Dutch support, he had agreed to offer a compromise 
 to Spain on the basis of the * alternatives ' of either 
 keeping what he had already conquered in the war, or 
 of holding Franche-Comte and some fortresses on the 
 frontiers of the Spanish Netherlands/ 
 
 While Louis was thus giving the law to Europe, 
 Temple was the accredited Envoy at the Viceregal Court 
 at Brussels. His delight at being appointed to a post 
 which had been the great ambition of his youth was 
 increased by the unexpected honour of a baronetcy, and 
 Sir William settled down with his family in Brussels to 
 watch over Spanish neutrality in the Anglo-Dutch war, 
 to promote a good understanding between England and 
 Spain, and, later on, to mediate between Spain and 
 France. In Castel Rodrigo he met a very able Viceroy, 
 who was quite willing to converse freely with the cour- 
 teous Englishman ; and Temple gained a clear view of 
 the political situation, and a very real sense of the 
 imminence of the danger from France. He perceived 
 that Louis was trying to delay the termination of the 
 Anglo-Dutch war till he had made a great impression on 
 the Netherlands, and he became convinced of the neces- 
 
 close of the Franco-Spanish war, the Emperor and the Empire 
 binding themselves not to interfere in that struggle (Meiern, 
 Register, p. Ixxvi ; Kitchin, ' France,' iii. 98). 
 
 1 Cambrai and the Cambresis, Douai, Aire, St. Omer, Furnes, 
 and Bergues, with their dependances. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 21 
 
 sity of a close alliance between the two great naval 
 and Protestant Powers. In this view he was soon 
 strengthened by a conversation with the Dutch Ambas- 
 sador at Breda, to which town he had gone for the peace 
 negotiations. Holland, indeed, had become alarmed at 
 the rapid success of Louis and Turenne, and when 
 Temple journeyed incognito to the Hague — ostensibly 
 to accompany his sister, ' who wished to see the country 
 she had heard so much about ' — he found the Grand 
 Pensionary very ready to listen to his suspicions and 
 suggestions. 
 
 This first and informal meeting is of great interest and 
 importance, because it marked the beginning between 
 the two men of a notable friendship which had very 
 great influence on their future diplomatic relations. 
 
 There was something very similar in their characters. 
 De Witt ' was as plain, direct, and square as any man 
 could be,'^ wrote Temple, whose own frankness and 
 honesty were the strongest points in his character. The 
 virtual ruler of one of the richest countries in the world 
 lived as frugally and unceremoniously as a simple 
 burgess ; and the English Ambassador, though careful 
 to uphold his dignity, despised the arrogance of display 
 as much as he despised the punctilios of diplomatic 
 etiquette. They were both shrewd, painstaking, and 
 inventive ; but De Witt possessed a calm courage in the 
 face of danger that placed him on a higher level than the 
 man who, in later years, showed a certain amount of 
 timidity in a difficult situation. 
 
 Between two such men there was cordiality from the 
 
 first. Each was surprised and pleased at the other's 
 
 frankness. Temple was acting unofficially, and was 
 
 therefore rather guarded in his expressions ; but De Witt 
 
 * Temple to Arlington, January 24, 1668. 
 
22 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 spoke with the confidence of his position as Grand 
 Pensionary of the predominant province. He denied 
 that he had ever seriously entertained Louis' ' offensive 
 and disgraceful offer ' to partition the Spanish Nether- 
 lands with Holland, but was unwilling to desert his 
 policy of conciliation towards France. He admitted, 
 indeed, that an alliance between England and Holland 
 was a natural one, for the two countries were connected 
 in blood, manners, and religion, and both required the 
 Netherlands as a barrier against French aggression ; 
 but he was sceptical as to the intentions of his late 
 antagonist, and refused to be England's cat's-paw.^ 
 Temple sent an account of this conversation to Arlington, 
 whose knowledge of languages and of Continental politics 
 had gained for him the position of chief director of 
 foreign affairs since his appointment as Secretary of 
 State. This Minister was at first cold and guarded in 
 his replies, but at length sent an important despatch, 
 which enabled Temple officially to suggest an alliance 
 to De Witt. The reason for Arlington's change of 
 attitude can be traced to the violent anti-Catholic and 
 anti-French attitude which had been recently taken up 
 by the English nation. The growing aversion to 
 * Popery and wooden shoes '^ had bulked large in the 
 divisions of Parliament and in the political disturbances 
 of the London mob. It had also been chiefly responsible 
 for the fall of Clarendon. Arlington had a Dutch wife 
 and some Dutch sympathies, but his chief reasons for 
 secretly negotiating with De Witt came from his desire 
 to thwart a personal rival in Buckingham, and from 
 his anxiety to avoid the fate of the King's late adviser. 
 
 1 Temple to Arlington, January 24, 1668. Also see Temple 
 to Bridgman, January 27, 1668. 
 
 2 Ludlow, ii. 298. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 23 
 
 Temple hurried off to England, and used his powers of 
 persuasion to such effect that he was enabled to return 
 to the Hague armed with full powers to arrange an 
 alliance. Charles showed his usual duplicity in the 
 matter. He was as firmly against Holland as ever, but 
 he was willing to take the line of least resistance, and to 
 throw a sop to the clamorous Parliament ; while he 
 secretly hoped that Louis, in his anger at being thwarted, 
 would help him by wreaking vengeance on the Re- 
 public. 
 
 The story of the negotiations for the Triple Alliance 
 throws into strong relief Temple's character as a 
 diplomat. While various opinions have been held as 
 to the effect of the treaties signed on January 23, 1668, 
 few will deny that the conclusion of such important 
 agreements in the unprecedented time of five days was 
 very largely due to the English Plenipotentiary. He 
 had the good luck to be entrusted with negotiations 
 agreeing at once with his own sentiments, the momentary 
 tendencies of England and Holland, and the general 
 interests of Europe ; but De Witt's congratulatory re- 
 mark that ' it looked like a miracle '^ shows that the 
 difficulties could only have been overcome by one 
 gifted with very great tact and adroitness. ' It is true 
 that mutual confidence and common interest dispense 
 with all rules, smooth the rugged way, remove every 
 obstacle, and make all things plain and level,' said 
 Burke ';^ and Temple's success seems to have been due 
 to the fact that in an age of intrigue, double-dealing, 
 and corruption, his clean, straightforward, and honest 
 diplomacy inspired that confidence which begets confi- 
 dence ; while his simple, whole-hearted enthusiasm for 
 
 ^ Temple to Arlington, January 24, 1668. 
 2 ' Regicide Peace' ('Works,' viii. 333). 
 
24 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 his work, and his almost boyish disregard of ceremony, 
 seem to have carried with him Ambassadors who had 
 hitherto been accustomed to the more frigid and tor- 
 tuous paths of conventional statesmanship. ' Sir 
 William Temple's address, vigilance, and sincerity are 
 without example '^ was the official verdict of the Dutch 
 Government ; while the general feeling in Holland was 
 one of 'great joy and wonder'^ at the result of his 
 efforts. 
 
 Before the arguments and persuasions of the English 
 Envoy, De Witt's doubts as to the policy of changing an 
 old and constant ally for a new and inconstant friend, 
 as England had proved, melted away ; more particularly 
 as the danger to the Republic in crossing the path of 
 Louis was to be lessened by the inclusion of Sweden in 
 the League, which would then be ' too strong a bar for 
 France to venture on.'^ 
 
 This addition to the strength of the two naval Powers 
 was secured by the direct personal appeal of Temple to 
 Count Dhona, who was so pleased and flattered at the 
 unceremonious* frankness of the Englishman that he 
 willingly promised to use his influence with his Govern- 
 ment. The negotiations for the treaty proceeded 
 apace, and the French Ambassador was for once 
 caught napping. He had kept Louis informed of the 
 
 1 Letter from the States to the King of Great Britain, 
 February i8, 1668. 
 
 2 Temple to Godolphin, January 28, 1668. 
 
 3 Temple to Arlington, January 24, 1668. 
 
 * ' That evening I went to the Count Dhona, and ran over all 
 ceremonies of our characters, by going straight into his chamber, 
 taking a chair, and sitting down by him before he could rise 
 out of his. I told him . . . that ceremonies were intended to 
 facilitate business, and not to hinder it ' (Temple to Bridgman, 
 January 27, 1668). 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 25 
 
 progress of what the Bourbon was pleased to term the 
 'plot'^ against himself — as if all resistance to France was 
 treason — but he reassured him as to the imminence of 
 the danger, and expressed himself as feeling confident 
 that ' all would end in smoke. '^ He was relying on the 
 power of French intrigue during the time which must 
 elapse before the consent of the Provinces could be 
 obtained in the regular constitutional manner ; but he 
 had mistaken his man. Temple had too strong a sense 
 of the imperative need for a quick solution of the 
 difficulty, and D'Es trades* cool 'We will discuss this 
 matter six weeks hence ' ^ was answered by a vigorous 
 onslaught on De Witt's reluctance to break through 
 the existing forms, and a successful appeal for the 
 use in the emergency of the still undissolved secret 
 commission which had been appointed during the late 
 war. 
 
 The result was the arrangement in five days of that 
 Concert which, by the formal adhesion of Sweden three 
 months later ' for satisfaction received,'* became known 
 as the * Triple Alliance.' 
 
 Three separate treaties were signed on the same day. 
 The first recorded the conditions of a defensive alliance 
 between England and Holland, while in the second 
 these allies bound themselves to endeavour to restore 
 peace between France and Spain on the basis of the 
 ' alternatives.' 
 
 Both these treaties carefully avoided all signs of 
 menace to France, but a sting lay in the fourth article 
 
 1 ' MemoiresHistoriques/ii. 361. Voltaire called the resistance 
 to Louis an ' intrigue ' (' Sidcle,' p. 99). 
 
 2 Temple to Arlington, January 24, 1668. * Ibid. 
 
 * ' Quo una ex parte obligaretur Rex Sueciae, mediante satis- 
 factione praedicta ad amplectandum designatum fcedus ' (extract 
 from Swedish Act, T. W. ii. 81). 
 
26 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 of the second treaty, by which 'media ma j oris efficaciae'^ 
 were to be used to compel the acquiescence of Spain, 
 and a cessation of hostilities was imposed on Louis 
 — terms which, as D'Estrades said, ' were not very 
 proper to be digested by a King of twenty-nine years 
 old, and at the head of eighty thousand men.'^ But the 
 third and secret treaty was of a still more serious 
 character, and opened a new page in history by the 
 introduction of the idea of that active interference by 
 neutral Powers between two warring States, which 
 plays such a prominent part in modern international 
 pohtics. It provided that force should be used against 
 whichever of the parties refused to make peace on the 
 basis of the alternatives ; and that, if France were the 
 recalcitrant party, the alhes were to join with Spain to 
 reduce her once more to the limits imposed by the 
 Peace of the Pyrenees. Holland had thus been induced 
 to change the policy of a hundred years, the French 
 had been outwitted, and Temple had scored a great 
 personal triumph. In our admiration of the English 
 Envoy's success we must not forget that in the broad 
 outlines of foreign policy he was but a passive instru- 
 ment in the hands of Charles; but we must also remember 
 that for the details of a scheme conditioned by that 
 policy Temple's friendship with De Witt and Temple's 
 ability were mainly responsible. He had justified 
 Arlington's determination to follow Solomon's advice, 
 and to * send a wise man on an errand and say nothing 
 to him ';^ he had gone far to establish the maxim that 
 
 1 Second Treaty, § 4. In the original draft in French the 
 words ' a la force et a la constrainte ' were used. These were 
 moderated at Temple's suggestion to ' aux moyens plus efficaces ' 
 (Temple to Arlington, January 24, 1668). 
 
 2 Temple to Arlington, January 24, 1668. 
 
 3 Arlington's Letters, March 13, 1668. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 27 
 
 ' In politics one must always speak the truth ';^ and he 
 had won for himself a European reputation as a wise 
 counsellor, an adroit diplomat, and an honest man. The 
 more pity that he should have afterwards weakened 
 that reputation in the eyes of some of his countrymen. 
 
 The Triple Alliance has been idealized as the first 
 great check to the ambitions of Louis XIV., and this view 
 was forcibly expressed by Macaulay.^ To the argument 
 that Louis was only compelled by this measure to make 
 peace on the terms which he had offered before it was 
 formed, this writer answered that ' Louis made his offer 
 only in order to avert some such measure as the Triple 
 Alliance, and adhered to his offer only in consequence of 
 that Alliance.' In defence of this opinion, he argued that 
 the annexation of Franche-Comte was one of the French 
 King's favourite projects, and that he was compelled to 
 disgorge it, not from regard to his word — for that had 
 never restrained him — but, as Europe believed at the 
 time, from fear of the Alliance. No one can deny the 
 fact that the world then held this exalted opinion of the 
 famous League, and that the prestige of England was 
 thereby enormously increased ; but some will say that 
 this only puts the statecraft of Louis in a brighter light. 
 ' Qui scit dissimulare, scit regnare,' was the advice of 
 his ancestor, and to delude all Europe was no mean 
 achievement even for such a brilliant disciple of Macchi- 
 avelli as Louis XIV. No one knew better than the 
 Grand Monarch how to temper ambition with caution, 
 and when he had gained immense advantages he could 
 well afford to yield on some points in order to pose as 
 a magnanimous and moderate conqueror. He who 
 would aim at a kingdom will sometimes be content to 
 
 ^ Flassan, ' Hist, de Diplomatie Fran^aise,' ii. 353. 
 2 Essay on ' Sir William Temple.' 
 
28 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 relinquish a province. As Louis himself said, ' Beyond 
 the recogni2;ed terms of peace there were others which 
 depended solely from the secret views I at that time 
 entertained ' ; ^ and, with his eyes fixed on the Spanish 
 throne, with its sickly occupant, and with the Partition 
 Treaty with the Emperor in his pocket, he could well 
 afford to laugh in secret at his openly triumphant 
 enemies. 
 
 For the Triple Alliance was, after all, not a very 
 serious danger to France. Charles II. was really her 
 friend, and the time was almost ripe for the Treaty of 
 Dover ; Sweden was an old ally who had joined the 
 League as a commercial speculation, and could be 
 easily bought off ; while even in Holland there was still 
 a large party in Louis' interests.. 
 
 The Concert of 1668 was of immense importance in 
 providing a precedent for future and more powerful 
 coalitions, but its apparent effect — the Peace of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle — appears to have been, on the whole, a victory, 
 not for the Triple Alliance and Europe, but for France. 
 It left Louis with a recognition of part of his claims in 
 the War of Devolution ; it contained no word to 
 hamper his claims on the Spanish throne ; ^ and if it 
 marked a check in his advance, that check was but a 
 deliberate halt for the purpose of a broader scheme of 
 aggression. 
 
 ^ ' Memoires Historiques,' ii. 369. 
 
 2 It practically admitted that his wife's renunciation was 
 invalid, an admission which was also made in the Partition 
 Treaty by his most formidable opponent, the Emperor. 
 
Ill 
 
 ' Mars gravior sub pace latet.' 
 
 Claudian. 
 
 ' Though this Alliance was happily planted, yet it was 
 unhappily cultivated,' says Temple in a characteristic 
 metaphor ; and, indeed, ' the new and uncertain friend '* 
 was too soon to justify De Witt's doubts. The Alliance 
 that Pepys calls ' the only good thing that hath been 
 done' since the King came into England ' ;^ that Burnet 
 calls the 'masterpiece of Charles'^ life'; that gave 
 Temple what was almost a triumphal procession to Aix — 
 this Alliance was to fall before the unsteady counsels 
 of a King and Ministers who put power before principle, 
 and who were ready to buy the means of misgoverning 
 England by humiliating themselves before France. 
 
 The fall of Clarendon had given to Charles what the 
 death of Mazarin had given to Louis XIV. — the power 
 to pursue his own policy, and to be the ' King, which he 
 had never been before.' He could now intrigue with his 
 own Ministers for Catholic toleration, and with France 
 for the humiliation both of the Dutch people and of the 
 English Parliament. Louis — with his haughty temper 
 inflamed against 'Messieurs les Marchands,' who had tried 
 to ' stay the course of the sun '* — was now to bid high 
 for the English alliance which was to protect his com- 
 merce in a war of vengeance ; and the price of Charles* 
 
 1 T. W. i. ^6. 2 Diary, February 14, 1668. 
 
 3 ' History of His Own Times,' i. 440. j 
 * Ranke, ' Franz. Gesch.,' iii. 285. 
 29 
 
30 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 infamy was to be used for an equally unscrupulous 
 attack on the political and religious liberties of a country 
 which hated France, hated Popery, and was eager to 
 preserve the Triple Alliance. 
 
 It was no easy task that Charles set himself. Abso- 
 lute power alone was almost beyond the reach of a King 
 whose mental and moral fibres had been weakened by a 
 long course of debauchery, and the retention of Catho- 
 licism as an integral part of his scheme either savoured 
 of insanity^ or was the bravest thing he ever did. If 
 the latter, he soon shrank back from his own deed, and 
 it was left to his more stubborn, and perhaps more 
 insane, brother to reap the full fruits of the crop of 
 suspicions and ill-feeling sown by Charles' unfortunate 
 attempt. 
 
 In entering on the policy of the Treaty of Dover, the 
 King had to contend with divisions in the Cabal itself. 
 Arlington was still opposed to Buckingham, and still 
 
 1 It may be argued — in view of the familiarity of Europe with 
 the idea of 'cujus regio ejus religio,' and in view of what had 
 happened in Bohemia and the Palatinate, and was happening in 
 Silesia and Hungary — that Charles' plan was not merely a wild 
 dream, and that the Popish panic and the Revolution were but 
 the results of England's sense of the imminent danger of that 
 plan succeeding. To this the answer may be made that England 
 was not the Continent ; that her constitutional growth and power 
 of national resistance were peculiar ; and that for a King, who had 
 little ' droit administratif ' left in his hands to try to impose 
 autocracy and Catholicism on a nation which had recently 
 passed through the Civil War, and whose memory of the Gun- 
 powder Plot and the Irish massacres was still vivid, did indeed 
 ' savour of insanity.' If the then state of Europe made his plan 
 theoretically conceivable, the state of England made its applica- 
 tion to our country practically impossible. The wonder is that 
 Charles, who had often showed himself an adroit politician, 
 should have entertained such a wild design {vide Seeley, ' Growth 
 of British Policy,' ii., § 3). 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 31 
 
 opposed to France, and he induced the King to send 
 Temple as Ambassador to the Hague ; a step which, 
 considering the late Envoy's well-known sympathies, 
 could only be taken as a determination to maintain the 
 Triple Alliance. Charles, however, only agreed to this — 
 or possibly suggested it — in order to blind the eyes of his 
 people to the fact that he had by now definitely em- 
 braced the religion of his brother, and was preparing to 
 put into execution his now definite plan of restoring 
 Roman Catholicism to England with French aid.^ 
 Arlington, too, was a Catholic, and, on being secretly 
 told of the King's conversion, became an eager pro- 
 moter of the proposed treaty. 
 
 Meanwhile, Temple was doing his best to sustain an 
 Alliance which he was beginning to realize rested on 
 very shaky foundations. Charles, however, was anxious 
 to obtain supplies from the suspicious Commons by 
 being able to assure them with verbal accuracy that the 
 Triple Alliance was still firm ; and for a time he managed 
 to hold his balance between Louis and De Witt. He 
 repudiated Temple's action in instigating the States- 
 General to complain of infractions of the Treaty of Aix- 
 la-ChapeUe, but he yielded to the urgent entreaties of 
 De Witt that he should offer England's security for the 
 payment of Spain's promised subsidies to Sweden. But, 
 in spite of Charles' lip-service to the Alliance, his 
 Parliament was growing more and more uneasy, and 
 voted such inadequate supplies that the King was driven 
 to the speedy completion of his negotiations with Louis. 
 The threatened arrival of an Envoy from the suspicious 
 De Witt precipitated matters, and the actual arrival of 
 
 ^ Charles' definite plan dates from early in 1669, when he had 
 a long consultation on the subject with the Duke of York (see 
 Clarke's ' History of James II. ' (1816), i. 442). 
 
32 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 Henrietta — whose influence over her late converted 
 brother was as strong as her hatred of the Dutch Re- 
 pubHc — helped to put the coping-stone on the protracted 
 negotiations of Arlington and Colbert, and gave the 
 infamous result the popular title of ' Le Traite de 
 Madame ' — a name which may be considered doubly 
 suitable when we remember that additional influence 
 was brought to bear on a King of well-known habits by 
 the ' baby face '^ of the future Duchess of Portsmouth. 
 The inclusion of a clause which bound Charles to declare 
 himself a Catholic gave rise to a humorous piece of by- 
 play, in which the Protestant members of the Cabal 
 were deluded by a ' Traite Simule ';^ but it is dangerous 
 to fool some men, and in amusing himself at Shaftes- 
 bury's expense the English King was running risks for 
 the future. 
 
 At the instance of Louis, Temple was now privately 
 recalled from the Hague. This increased the already 
 acute suspicions of De Witt, more especially as it so 
 quickly followed the French seizure of Lorraine, the 
 visit of ' Madame,' and Buckingham's unexplained visit 
 to Paris. ^ The Grand Pensionary anxiously asked for 
 Temple's opinion as to what was going on behind the 
 scenes, but the English Ambassador could only con- 
 fess to equal ignorance and similar suspicions ; and 
 could only promise that, if his Government really in- 
 
 1 Evelyn, November 3, 1670. 
 
 2 A King may conspire against his own subjects without 
 authority and at his own risk ; but even to Charles some decent 
 diplomatic pretext was necessary for making war on an inoffensive 
 State, with whom recent pledges of peace and friendship had been 
 exchanged. 
 
 2 De Witt sarcastically inquired from Temple if this visit was 
 merely ' pour voir le pais ou apprendre la langue ' (Temple to 
 the Lord Keeper, September, 1670). 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 33 
 
 tended to desert the Triple Alliance, he personally would 
 never take any part in such an act of perfidy.^ 
 
 On his arrival in London, Temple found his worst 
 suspicions confirmed. He was received coldly by 
 Arlington, who avoided all references to ' things 
 material '; while from the King he could only extract 
 a few polite questions as to his journey. Clifford at first 
 was equally elusive, but he was at last committed to an 
 interview, and there gave Temple a glimpse of the true 
 state of affairs by bursting into a rage against the * com- 
 pany of rogues and rascals ' which governed the States, 
 who were unfit for the consideration of Charles or any 
 other Prince. 
 
 To this tirade Temple answered calmly, but refused to 
 change his attitude on the subject. He was now quite 
 convinced that a tempest was brewing which would 
 sweep away his labours in Holland, and his natural 
 caution made him make up his mind to ' get a warm 
 house over his head.' He determined to prove the truth 
 of the conviction he expressed in a farewell letter to De 
 Witt, to the effect that he was ' better turned for making 
 a good gardener than an able Minister. ' He paid a visit to 
 the King, kissed hands on the formal ending of his em- 
 bassy, received a few easy and courteous compliments, 
 and then retired to his corner, as he called it, at Sheen. ^ 
 
 In the picture of the times Temple now retires tem- 
 porarily into the background. He had made his name. 
 He had been feted and flattered abroad, and had 
 been honoured even to the extent of having questions 
 submitted to his arbitration, ' pas comme ambassa- 
 deur d'Angleterre, mais comme Chevalier Temple.'^ 
 
 ^ Temple to the Lord Keeper, September, 1670. 
 
 2 Temple to Sir John Temple, November 22, 1670. 
 
 3 Courtenay, i. 374. 
 
 3 
 
 V' 
 
 OF 
 
 / 
 
34 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 But he was sensitive to rebuffs, and was too vain to wish 
 to see his reputation diminished. He had risen to 
 sudden and deserved fame by the Triple Alhance. The 
 Triple Alliance was doomed, and there would be hard 
 words flying about. He must, therefore, retire out of 
 danger, and he did retire. He spent four quiet and, to 
 him, uneventful years in reading a little, writing a little, 
 and devoting a great deal of time to gaining new fame 
 as a fruit-grower. 
 
 Meanwhile the harvest of war and ruin which sprung 
 from the Treaty of Dover was being reaped in Europe. 
 Louis had enticed away the chief member of the Triple 
 Alliance, and had also succeeded by bribes and in- 
 trigues in robbing Holland of other possible allies. The 
 first blow in the war of vengeance was struck with 
 dramatic suddenness. As Temple tells us, the English 
 attack on the Smyrna fleet astonished the world like a 
 'clap of thunder in a fair frosty day.'^ Even Louis 
 himself appears to have been doubtful up to the last as 
 to the reality of Charles' intentions, and the surprise 
 seems to have almost paralyzed the Dutch. The United 
 Provinces, indeed, were in no condition to withstand 
 an attack. True, they had recovered marvellously from 
 the late war, and were both richer and more populous ; 
 but the natural courage of their people had been debased 
 by an excessive absorption in trade, and the anti- 
 Orange policy of the ruling Powers had resulted in an 
 ill-oflicered and ill-disciplined army, which was quite 
 unable to cope with a Conde or a Turenne, 
 
 It is small wonder, then, that the French troops met 
 
 with scant opposition as they poured across the Rhine, 
 
 overran Gelderland, Overyssel, and Utrecht, and swept 
 
 almost up to the very gates of Amsterdam itself. Indeed, 
 
 1 T. W., i. 379. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 35 
 
 had Louis followed the advice of his generals, the city 
 itself would probably have fallen, and the campaign 
 would have been ended at a blow. But the hesitation 
 of the French King gave the Dutch an opportunity for 
 putting into action the plan which was kept for moments 
 of supreme necessity. The dykes were cut, and a waste 
 of sea- water lay between Louis and his goal. 
 
 Holland was saved from attack by land, and De Ruyter 
 kept its coasts inviolate ; while the spirit of the Dutch 
 revived under affliction, and their natural courage was 
 hardened to stubbornness by despair. They had, too, an 
 equally dauntless leader. The inevitable reaction against 
 the existing Government had once more put a Prince of 
 Orange at the head of his countrymen — a Prince whose 
 enthusiasm was tempered by intelligence, whose courage 
 was stiffened by unconquerable resolution, and whose 
 patience, persistence, and stoical disregard for bodily 
 weakness made him a worthy descendant of William the 
 Silent. 
 
 Under his guiding hand the Dutch boldly faced the 
 enemy, and began to snatch from the hands of Louis the 
 complete victory which had already been stayed by 
 storms at sea and inundations on land. In the face of 
 these difficulties the French King retired to the pleasures 
 of Versailles, for it was no part of the policy of this 
 cautious Prince to take a personal part in operations 
 which did not contain the prospect of immediate suc- 
 cess. With characteristic arrogance he had a medal 
 struck in his honour, bearing his favourite image of the 
 all-conquering sun ; but the gallant defence of Groningen 
 was a spot on its brightness, and there was a cloud creep- 
 ing up from the horizon which, after forty years, was to 
 overshadow its glory. The first coalition of an alarmed 
 Europe was too weak to overcome the genius of Turenne, 
 
 3—2 
 
36 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 though it helped to save the Dutch by drawing off large 
 numbers of French troops ; but a second and more 
 powerful combination was soon ranged against Louis, 
 which in later years brought him to his knees. 
 
 Meanwhile in England there was a growing sense of 
 discontent with a war which had been disgracefully 
 planned, treacherously begun, and ingloriously pursued. 
 In a House which justly earned its title of the * Pen- 
 sionary Parliament ' there were two things, at any rate, 
 which gold could not buy — friendship to the Catholic 
 religion, and friendship to the French Crown ; and 
 though the Dutch war might have appealed to the 
 nation's wounded pride if England had been fighting 
 alone against Holland, yet the power which was to act 
 the part of Rome in Shaftesbury's ' Delenda est Car- 
 thago ' was clearly France. Englishmen saw one sus- 
 pected Papist commanding the nation's fleet and 
 another guiding the nation's counsels, each in the in- 
 terests of a Catholic ally who was seeking to destroy a 
 Protestant State. They saw the ripple which seemed 
 to presage a coming storm in England rising in France 
 to a wave which threatened to swamp the Huguenots. 
 Small wonder, then, that they scented Popish schemes 
 in every act of the Government ; that they viewed with 
 suspicion the * dark hovering ' of the army at Black- 
 heath ; that they took the first opportunity to challenge 
 Charles on the policy which was foreshadowed by the 
 second Declaration of Indulgence ; and that they made 
 it clear to him that Catholicism in England was a political 
 impossibility. With the fall of the King's domestic 
 scheme, fell also his foreign policy and the Ministers who 
 had helped in its formation. The Cabal ceased to exist. 
 Clifford retired into private life in disgust at the Test 
 Act and the perfidy of his colleagues ; Lauderdale, 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 37 
 
 Buckingham, and Arlington were in turn attacked in 
 Parliament ; and Shaftesbury, whose cunning had 
 taught him when to leave the sinking ship, was now 
 openly showing in the ranks of the Opposition the 
 acrimony of a man who had thought himself a master 
 of intrigue against the King who had made him his 
 dupe. 
 
 The reins of government, so far as they were allowed 
 to slip from the pleasure-filled hands of Charles, were 
 now in the hands of Danby. This statesman shaped his 
 policy on very different lines from those of his political 
 sponsors, Clifford and Buckingham. For the pro- 
 French tendencies of both and the Catholic views of the 
 former he substituted a sincere opposition to the influ- 
 ence of Louis, and a Cavalier-Anglican policy aimed 
 especially against the dangerous clique which owned 
 Shaftesbury as its head. 
 
 But while he thus returned to the policy of Clarendon, 
 he was far less firm and uncompromising than Charles' 
 first Minister. He had the independence to shape out a 
 bold policy of his own, but he was too supple and acute 
 not to know when to temper that boldness with caution, 
 and how to safeguard himself against the danger of 
 entire adhesion to one party. He scattered bribes with 
 both hands, but he managed to preserve something of 
 the air of a patriot. He smiled on the policy which 
 brought French gold into his own and his masters' 
 pockets, but he frowned on the alliance which contained 
 the dangerous elements of French Catholicism.^ He 
 made himself indispensable to the King, but he also 
 made himself grateful to a large section of the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 ^ Cf. his toast at a public banquet — ' Confusion of all that were 
 not for a war with France ' (Burnet, ii. 128.) 
 
38 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 His administration saw a change abroad as well as 
 at home. It saw the first signs of the approaching 
 transformation by which England's friend and foe in the 
 Treaty of Dover were to change places ; and it saw the 
 first signs of a renewal of the old rivalry of the Hundred 
 Years War. 
 
 The Treaty of Westminster marked the return to the 
 old policy of national independence and an under- 
 standing with Holland ; it marked the cessation of hos- 
 tilities between the two great sea Powers whose alliance 
 formed the keystone of the system of Europe in the days 
 of Marlborough ; and it marked the public reappearance 
 of the man who had that alliance so much at heart. 
 
 A projected Dutch treaty irresistibly turned men's 
 minds to the author of the Triple Alliance. Temple was 
 called from his retirement by general acclamation, and 
 though he ' feared that he was grown a little rusty by 
 lying still so long,'^ he performed the required task with 
 his accustomed ability and dispatch. Holland and 
 Spain had been engaged for some time in the hopeless 
 task of trying to arrange at Cologne a general peace 
 between France and the members of the Coalition ; they 
 were especially anxious to see the two naval Powers once 
 more at peace ; and Temple had little difficulty in 
 arranging, in three meetings, satisfactory terms for the 
 treaty. But though Charles had been driven to this 
 step by the ' necessity of his affairs, the humour of his 
 people, and the instances of his Parliament,'^ active war- 
 fare was but supplanted by even more active intrigue. 
 A peace which was * huddled up ' without the know- 
 ledge of either the Swedish mediators or even the English 
 plenipotentiaries at Cologne, was followed by treacherous 
 
 ^ Temple to Sir John Temple, February 17, 1674. 
 2 T. W., i. 376. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 39 
 
 dealings with France, in which Charles first tried to soften 
 the blow of his desertion by continuing to help his late 
 ally with men, guns, and secret information, and then 
 tried to turn his position to account by putting England's 
 neutrality up for sale. And a dishonest King was faced 
 by a corrupt and unprincipled Parliament. Now it was 
 that Clifford's bribery of the great men was extended by 
 Danby to the rank and file. Now it was that foreign 
 customers flocked to share in * le sale trafic,' and that 
 English, French, Spanish, and Dutch gold jingled in the 
 same pockets. For the anxious gaze of Europe was fixed 
 on England, on the country whose weight might pull 
 down the balance of power to the side of the Coalition. 
 Charles had ceased to aid Louis. Would he be compelled 
 to strike on the other side, or would he be forced to dis- 
 solve Parliament in order to bury England's present hope 
 of active intervention under the civil discords which 
 bade fair to attend a General Election ? 
 
 The answer to this question was eagerly awaited in 
 Continental councils, and nowhere more eagerly than at 
 The Hague, where the promoter of two Anglo-Dutch 
 treaties was conferring as Ambassador and friend with 
 the Prince of Orange. 
 
 For soon after the Treaty of Westminster, Temple had 
 once more crossed to Holland as England's representa- 
 tive. His now greatly enhanced fame had brought him 
 the offer of a Government post as Secretary of State, but 
 he was more at home in the cool air of diplomacy than 
 amidst the heated factions of home politics, and he gladly 
 acceded to Charles' request that he should offer Eng- 
 land's mediation to Holland and France. But he had 
 learnt from experience how prone was the King to a 
 * fatal turn of counsels,' and he determined that this time 
 he would ' know the ground on which he stood.' In a 
 
40 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 long private audience he took occasion to tell Charles 
 how ill-advised he had been ' in breaking measures and 
 treaties so solemnly taken and agreed.' The King 
 characteristically laid the blame on his Ministers, and 
 said that ' if he had been well served, he might have 
 made a good business enough of it.' He, however, went 
 on to justify a good deal what was past, and this roused 
 from Temple a determination to * go to the bottom of 
 that matter.' He earnestly represented that it was im- 
 possible to set up in England the same religion and 
 Government that was in France, because the ' universal 
 bent of the nation was against both '; and in England, 
 at any rate, it was not the nobles and clergy only who 
 enjoyed political significance. He concluded this, to 
 Charles, somewhat tedious discourse by quoting a 
 remark made by M. Gourville — ' the one foreigner I 
 know that understands England well ' — who said : 
 * Qu'un Roy d'Angleterre qui veut etre I'Homme de son 
 peuple, est le plus grand Roy du monde ; mais s'il veut 
 6tre quelque chose d'avantage, par Dieu il n'est plus 
 rien.' Charles showed some signs of impatience during 
 this lecture, but his natural good-nature and — dare we 
 whisper it ? — ^his sense of humour came to the rescue, 
 and at the end he laid his hand kindly on Temple's, 
 saying : * Et je veux etre I'Homme de mon peuple.' 
 This answer from the lips of a King who, in all prob- 
 ability, had the draft ready for the next year's Non- 
 Resistance Bill, and who was about to make yet another 
 secret treaty with Louis, might with more honesty have 
 been, ' I will be,' not ' the Man,' but ' the Master of 
 my people,* and it is possible that his hearer was not very 
 much impressed with a sense of Charles' sincerity.^ 
 
 ^ T. W., i. 383. Temple's opinion of Charles was largely- 
 coloured by his strong Royalist sentiments, but he describes him 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 41 
 
 The embassy of Temple which followed this conversa- 
 tion was rendered memorable by his connection with a 
 matter which was of vastly greater importance to Eng- 
 land than the Triple Alliance. The marriage between 
 William of Orange and Charles' niece Mary was the out- 
 come of that opposition to the Crown which gained im- 
 petus, not so much from popular antagonism to an un- 
 principled King who aimed at increasing the Royal 
 Prerogative, as from a sense of the danger which lay in 
 his family connections. Not only was Charles half a 
 Frenchman in birth and breeding, but the hated French 
 had a still more deeply hated religion — a religion which 
 was openly avowed by James and his new wife. The 
 one hope of the Protestants lay in the Anglican children 
 of Anne Hyde, and to whom could the Lady Mary be more 
 suitably mated than to William of Orange, who was half 
 an Englishman, of royal rank, and the great representa- 
 tive in Europe both of the Protestant cause and of the 
 opposition to French ascendancy ? Danby had per- 
 suaded Charles to disregard the opposition of Louis and 
 James^ to a marriage which had such obvious advantages 
 for England, but William had at first refused the prof- 
 fered alliance — nominally because ' his fortunes were 
 not in a condition for him to think of a wife,'^ really be- 
 
 (' Works,' i. 449) as a King who 'desired nothing but to be easy 
 himself, and that everybody else should be so ;' who ' was very 
 easy to change hands ... so that nothing looked steady in the 
 conduct of his affairs, nor aimed at any certain end ; . . . whose easy 
 and inglorious humour has made him lose many great occasions 
 of glory to himself, and greatness to his Crown.' 
 
 ^ Reresby, in his ' Memoirs,' p. 109, says that James had hopes 
 of marrying the Princess Mary to the Dauphin, thus making 
 England a province of France; but this statement must be 
 received with caution. 
 
 2 T. W., i. 397. 
 
42 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 cause he was doubtful as to the advisabihty of binding 
 himself to a Court which, as he thought, was running 
 counter to the wishes of the nation. 
 
 In the second year of Temple's embassy, however, he 
 appears to have begun to view the idea more favourably, 
 and asked Temple for his advice. The English Ambas- 
 sador was naturally delighted at the prospect of a union 
 which would strengthen the bond between the two 
 nations, and assured William that his fears for the posi- 
 tion of the Crown in England were unfounded, and that 
 even the Shaftesbury faction — who had been intriguing 
 with the Prince — would be hard put to it to find ' an 
 ill side to such a match.' Temple was also able, on the 
 authority of his wife and sister, to satisfy William's 
 natural curiosity as to the appearance, character, and 
 disposition of his prospective bride ; and the result of the 
 interview was that Lady Temple sailed almost immedi- 
 ately for England, carrying with her letters which opened 
 negotiations with Danby.^ It was not till the following 
 year, however, that the Prince crossed to Harwich, and 
 posted ' like a hasty lover ' to the Court. Temple was 
 then in England, for he had been sent for to receive a 
 second request to accept the post of Secretary — a re- 
 quest which, though strongly preferred by a King who 
 was evidently anxious to secure the tranquillizing 
 presence of the diplomat in his discordant councils, was 
 again, and as firmly, refused. In the negotiations for 
 the marriage Temple acted as intermediary between 
 Charles and William, and though to Danby must be given 
 the chief credit for the management of a union which 
 Louis felt * as he would the loss of an army,' the intimate 
 and trustful friendship between Prince and Ambassador 
 was by no means an unimportant factor in the comple- 
 1 T. w., i. 415. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 43 
 
 tion, with the necessary haste and secrecy, of one of the 
 greatest of the royal marriages which have determined 
 the course of international history. 
 
 In the following year Temple returned to the Hague 
 on his way to Nimeguen, to the congress whose long- 
 drawn-out and intricate negotiations were finally to end 
 in a hollow and uncertain peace. 
 
 The Anglo-Dutch Peace of 1674 had left Louis almost 
 single-handed against his enemies ; but one Power, if 
 ably led, has many advantages over even an extensive 
 Coalition. Unity of purpose gives to campaigns that 
 cohesion which makes for success, while undivided coun- 
 sels result in that rapidity of movement without which 
 the most consummate strategy may fail. To be first in 
 the field is very often to remain last on the field, and it 
 was by being ever beforehand with his enemies that 
 Louis gained the proud position which he occupied in 
 1678. The French King might, with equal truth, be given 
 his ancestor's title of ' Le Bien Servi,' for the cunning 
 of his diplomatists was only equalled by the skill of his 
 generals. Franche - Comte yielded in less than two 
 months to the genius of Vauban ; the superior forces of 
 William could not drive from the bloody field of Seneff 
 the redoubtable Conde ; while one of the greatest feats 
 of modern warfare sent the last German soldier flying 
 across the Rhine from the field of Colmar and Turenne. 
 But the glorious campaigns of 1674 were followed by a 
 time of darkness for France. She lost Turenne and 
 victory at Sasbach ; Conde retired ; and disasters at 
 Konzen and Treves followed the crushing defeat by sea 
 and land of her one ally, Sweden ; while, at home, Col- 
 bert's treasure was exhausted, and the overtaxed 
 peasantry was rising from discontent into open revolt. 
 It was now that Louis became anxious to separate his 
 
44 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 enemies, and to ensure the neutrality of England. It 
 was now that the long-talked-of Peace Congress became 
 less shadowy, and that Temple saw opening before him 
 a new and more difficult diplomatic task amid the 
 warring interests at Nimeguen. His part in the negotia- 
 tions, however, was not really a very important one. 
 Charles was too cunning to allow the certain feelings of 
 discontent to focus on England's representative, and he 
 refused to allow Temple to act as more than a nominal 
 mediator. The author of the Triple Alliance did nothing 
 to diminish his reputation, but he could do little to 
 increase it. He did his best to oil the wheels of diplo- 
 macy by framing rules for the pacific intercourse of the 
 nation's representatives, and he gave additional proofs of 
 one of the weaker points in his character by the jealousy 
 he showed of Du Cros ;^ but his heart was not in his work, 
 and his hand had little strength behind it. For at Nime- 
 guen the sword was mightier than the tongue. Temple 
 called the meeting of the Congress the ' Dawn of Peace, '^ 
 but * Victoria pax non pactione parienda est,' and its 
 success evidently waited on the fortunes of the field. 
 The dawn bade fair to be long in breaking when each 
 party claimed to keep all that he had gained and to 
 recover all that he had lost, and when France alone was 
 in the position of the successful gambler who is willing 
 to get up from the table with his hands full. Spain, as 
 usual, was proudly blind to her own impotence ; Branden- 
 burg wished to continue the struggle till the last Swede 
 was driven from the mainland ; and the only hope for 
 
 ^ A diplomatic busybody, nominally representing Swedish 
 interests in London, really in the pay of Barillon. Temple's 
 slighting remarks concerning Du Cros (T. W., i. 465) elicited a 
 ' Letter ... in answer to the impertinencies of Sir W. Temple ' 
 
 (1693)- 
 2 T. W., i. 418. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 45 
 
 peace lay in the attitude of the Dutch. It was the irony 
 of Fate which placed the most resolute opponent of 
 France at the head of a nation which was ready to sacri- 
 fice everything for her own commercial security; and 
 Temple was at one with William in resisting the idea of a 
 separate treaty between France and the States, for he 
 realized that Louis only wished for a neutralized Holland 
 as a signal for an attack ' with more advantage and sur- 
 prise ' ^ on a weakened Coalition. 
 
 But the wavering counsels of Charles, the opportunism 
 of Louis, and a divided Holland, all fought against Prince 
 and diplomat. There were hopes of better things when 
 the firm resolution of the newly married William began 
 to influence the vacillating Stuart ; but the refusal by 
 Louis of the conditions of peace inspired by the younger 
 man led to a treaty being signed, between England and 
 the Republic alone, which the author of the Triple Alli- 
 ance, who had hoped that Charles would have forced the 
 French hand by active intervention in the war, judged 
 to be ' but an ill copy of the great original.'^ And Louis 
 was now less than ever inclined to yield to William's 
 terms, for he had been encouraged by the exploits of his 
 navy and Duquesne to copy the example of De Ruyter 
 at Chatham, and by the sudden capture of Ghent and 
 Ypres was now in a position to extort peace from a 
 thoroughly alarmed States-General. Temple hurried off 
 to the Hague, where he was told that his coming was 
 ' esteemed like that of the swallow, which brought fair 
 weather always with it ';^ but it was Holland's hope for 
 the sunshine of unrestricted and secure prosperity on her 
 own commerce which was voiced in this welcome, and 
 
 1 T. W., i. 455. 2 ii)id,, p. 456. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 464, 'the handsomest Dutch compliment I had met 
 with.' 
 
46 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 with peace in sight on Louis' proi^ered terms of a 
 * barrier ' ^ in the Spanish Netherlands, a deaf ear was 
 turned to the expostulations of Prince, nobles, and Am- 
 bassador, who would put loyalty to allies before self- 
 interest, and who hoped either to continue the war, or 
 to recover the conditions which had been wrested from 
 their hands by the merchant faction at Amsterdam. 
 What Temple calls the ' fatal day ' of August ii, 1678, 
 saw the Dutch nation emerge from the six years' struggle 
 without the loss of an acre of land, and with her trading 
 interests secured and even extended ; but it also saw 
 France in the happy position of being able to exercise 
 imperiously the * Droict de Bienfeance ' against the 
 deserted Coalition.^ The disappointed Ambassador 
 aptly summed up the situation when he said that 
 ' France, having made peace with Holland, treated all 
 the rest with ease and leisure, as playing a sure game 'f 
 and though Temple found a crumb of comfort in being 
 saved by some difficulty of etiquette from the disgrace 
 of affixing his name to the treaty, William's wrath at 
 his country's betrayal of her allies could only find relief 
 in a last angry effort before the walls of Mons. 
 
 ' Thus ended in smoke the negotiation which was near 
 raising so great a fire,'* says Temple; and he gives un- 
 willing but unstinted praise to the Frenchmen whose 
 kill had quenched the conflagration which at one time 
 threatened to destroy their country. ' The French fools 
 are dead,'^ he quotes, and the Peace of Nimeguen indeed 
 marked a triumph for French generalship and French 
 diplomacy. It left Louis the only gainer after a struggle 
 
 ^ The ' barrier ' extended from the sea to the Meuse, and was 
 guarded by Nieuport, Courtrai, Oudenarde, Ath, Charleroi, etc. 
 2 T. W., i. 479. 3 Ibid., p. 470. * Ibid., p. 470. 
 
 ^ Italian proverb, ' Gii pazzi Francesi sono morti.' 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 47 
 
 against the massed forces of the greater part of Europe, 
 and it placed him for the time being on a very pinnacle 
 of glory. To his courtiers he appeared, in the words of 
 Pellisson, ' a visible miracle.' To his people he was as 
 a god, and his apotheosis appears in the inscription on 
 his statue in the Place des Victoires — ' Homini Immor- 
 tali.' Yet the peace of 1678 was really only an armistice. 
 The very fact that the gain was all on the side of France 
 left sore feelings in the hearts of her adversaries, and the 
 fact of that gain being discounted by the failure of the 
 immediate object of the war made it certain that Louis 
 himself would speedily renew the struggle. 
 
 When Temple sailed for England with feelings of anger 
 at the result of his last diplomatic mission, he left behind 
 him a friend and Prince whose unquenchable hatred of 
 France was within ten years to spur a mightier coalition 
 against the terror of Europe. He returned to the dis- 
 comfited pensioner of a monarch whose treacherous 
 seizure of Strasburg within three years was to mark a 
 new start along the path which he had marked out for 
 himself ; the path which was to slope rapidly downwards 
 from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and to land 
 him at length in the retributive humiliations of Blenheim 
 and Ramillies. 
 
IV 
 
 ' Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep.' 
 
 Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 At the Peace of Nimeguen, Temple ended a career as 
 foreign Ambassador in which he had consistently op- 
 posed France. He returned from Holland in February, 
 1679, and found England still tracing her disturbances 
 to the same country. 
 
 The chicanery of Charles had met with failure, and his 
 position in the eyes of Europe and of his own people had 
 been weakened ; but England's neutrality was still no 
 inconsiderable factor in the politics of a continent where 
 the designs of Louis were but lying temporarily dormant. 
 The aim of the French King was still to foment discord 
 between Charles and his Parliament, still to keep England 
 so occupied that the decisions of the ' Chambres de 
 Reunion ' might be freely enforced on Europe. 
 
 We see, therefore, that active foreign interference in 
 English politics which had been introduced during the 
 recent war extended and amplified by Barillon ; we see a 
 union between the Whigs and France which gained for 
 Louis the title of the ' Leader of the Opposition '; we see 
 that Opposition successful in disbanding the army, and 
 in overthrowing Danby ; and we see the final triumph of 
 the French policy when Charles was forced to dissolve 
 Parliament for the last time, and to become humbly 
 dependent on Louis. 
 
 To France, again, we look for the causes of the religious 
 48 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 49 
 
 convulsions which met Temple on his arrival in England, 
 convulsions of which he who had known the turmoil of 
 the Civil War said : * I never saw greater disturbances 
 in men's minds.' ^ The Revolution which was advancing 
 towards its climax in 1688 was but a part of the great 
 European movement which was darkening the prospects 
 of Protestantism ; and the attacks of Louis on the Hugue- 
 nots, which were to culminate in the Revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes, went far towards accentuating the 
 alarm aroused in the minds of Englishmen by the 
 glimpses they had obtained of Charles' French designs. 
 To the Continent was traced the origin of the * damnable 
 and hellish plot,'^ in which * some truth there was, but 
 dashed and brewed with lies ';^ in the Jesuit colleges at 
 Valladolid and St. Omer was hatched the conspiracy which 
 was to give violent expression to the Catholic anger at 
 England's understanding with Protestant Holland ; while 
 in Coleman's correspondence with France was seen one 
 of the few tangible pieces of evidence in a plot which 
 was built up mainly by the monstrous fictions of Gates, 
 and of that infamous band of * informers ' whose rank 
 growth had flourished on the persecuting measures of 
 the reign. 
 
 Foreign influences, again, supplied the chief ground 
 for the action of, and the main chance of success to, that 
 party of ' Whig '* politicians who were to seize the oppor- 
 tunity of a public panic to push themselves into power 
 by the impeachment of a Minister who had intrigued with 
 France, and by the attempted exclusion of an heir to the 
 throne who had embraced the religion of the French King. 
 
 1 T. W., i. 332. 
 
 2 Resolution of the House of Commons, October, 1678. 
 2 Dryden, ' Absalom and Achitophel.' 
 
 * The name came later ; the thing was already in existence. 
 
 4 
 
50 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 There is no evidence to show that any leading poh- 
 tician had a hand in the inception of a plot which swayed 
 all England with passion and terror, but all used it to 
 further their own ends, and no one more zealously and 
 unscrupulously than the President of the ' Green Ribbon 
 Club,' who, by skilfully fanning the flame of popular 
 frenzy, became the head of a great party uniting peers 
 and people in resistance to royal supremacy and Anglican 
 intolerance; and who was then in a position at last to 
 take some revenge for the years of impotence, ill-usage, 
 and even imprisonment, which had fallen to his lot as 
 the leader of a small and baffled faction. 
 
 The character of Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftes- 
 bury, has been painted in many shades, varying from 
 the deep black of Macaulay's tremendous philippic to 
 the kindly white of his apologist, Mr. Christie ; but the 
 true Whig leader seems to lie somewhere between these 
 two extremes. It is a mistaken view which would make 
 him appear as a high-minded patriot : it is unjust to 
 concentrate the indignation of a more sensitive age on 
 a statesman whose faults were mostly the faults of his 
 times, but whose ability laid him more open than his 
 colleagues to the fierce light of contemporary and later 
 criticism. It is useless trying to acquit him of political 
 profligacy : it is not right to print his name too darkly 
 on a sullied page because his ' nimble wit outran the 
 heavy pack ;'^ because he surpassed his fellow profligates 
 in the power of gauging accurately the trend of events. 
 It is vain attempting to whitewash a statesman whose 
 ' wild ambition to slide on Fortune's ice '^ led him finaUy 
 into deeper and fouler waters, and whose absorbing 
 desire always to ride on the crest of the political wave 
 
 1 Dryden, ' The Medal,' line 45. 
 
 2 Dryden, ' Absalom and Achitophel,* line 200. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 51 
 
 forced him into a position whence he was carried on the 
 tide of popular idolatry into more and more violent 
 courses, which not only led to the shedding of much 
 innocent blood, but which undermined at once his health 
 and his intelligence, and caused his career to end in 
 failure and disgrace : it is unfair to refuse him any 
 * escape upwards,'^ to prefer false charges against him 
 which even the vitriolic pen of Dryden leaves unwritten, 
 to deny him the credit for his championship of toleration 
 and political liberty, and to be silent on the brighter 
 aspects of his character, on his purity in money matters in 
 what — to repeat Ovid's sarcasm — might truly be called a 
 ' golden age,' and his purity in private life in times when 
 ' debauchery was loyalty and gravity rebellion.' 
 
 But it is the principal actor who too often has to bear 
 the chief blame for a dramatic failure, and there could 
 be little doubt that Shaftesbury was the most important 
 figure on the political stage when Temple arrived in 
 England. It had been inevitable that, once given an 
 opportunity and a popular war-cry, the burning ambi- 
 tion and dominant personality of the first great dema- 
 gogue would attract many followers and bring him to 
 the front. The opportunity had come. The last days 
 of 1678 had seen the Whigs swept into popular favour 
 on a wave of excitement and terror. The last session of 
 the Cavalier Parliament had seen the leader of a minority 
 become the virtual leader of the House, and had seen the 
 weapon which chance had put into his hands used with 
 fierce energy to destroy Danby and to get rid of James 
 and the Catholic succession. The first days of 1679 ^^^ 
 seen the King's hands at last forced by his opponents, 
 the eighteen-year-old Parliament at last dissolved in a 
 desperate effort to save the impeached Minister, and the 
 ^ Macaulay, Essay on ' Sir William Temple.' 
 
 4—2 
 
52 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 appeal to the country for which Shaftesbury and his 
 followers had so long intrigued at last made a certainty. 
 And it was in no half-hearted fashion that the country 
 answered that appeal. In the first General Election, 
 which was fought almost entirely on those party lines 
 which form the key to our present Parliamentary system, 
 the Whigs swept the board. Cavalier and Tory senti- 
 ment sank into temporary obscurity before the all-per- 
 vading terror of the Papists, and the Court party almost 
 disappeared before the organization and discipline of the 
 Green Ribbon Club. Well might a man of Temple's 
 Royalist sentiments and placid temperament try to avoid 
 taking part in such a political crisis. Well might the 
 sensitive diplomat shrink from ' the most surprising 
 scene that ever was,' a scene which was ' unfit for such 
 actors as I know myself to be, my character abroad still 
 continuing.'^ On his arrival in England during the 
 General Election, Temple had been once more requested 
 by the King to undertake the post of Secretary ; but he 
 had lost the support of his chief friend in the late Lord 
 Treasurer ; he knew that the Whigs included the quon- 
 dam Ambassador in their bitter hostility ; his honesty 
 recoiled from the attitude of a King whose sense of 
 honour and justice had yielded to expediency in a plot 
 which he knew to be false ; and his vanity was unable to 
 blind him to the uncomfortable certainty that what 
 Charles wanted was the prestige and good fame of the 
 author of the Triple Alliance rather than the advice and 
 help of a new Secretary. Temple therefore refused to 
 barter away or imperil his good name, and though he 
 was unwilling to risk censure by openly refusing the 
 proffered post, he adroitly ' ordered his pretensions '^ in 
 the elections, so that he should fail to be returned, and 
 T. W.. i. 3.^2. 2 /2,j-^,^ p_ 332^ 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 53 
 
 consequently have an excuse for refusing an office which 
 ought to be held by a member of the House of Commons. 
 But the new Parliament met, and surpassed all expecta- 
 tions in the violence of its proceedings. It nullified 
 Charles' desperate efforts to rescue his Minister — for a 
 dissolution was not allowed to save Danby any more 
 than in after-years it was allowed to save Warren Hast- 
 ings — and, in face of the King's pardon, the late Lord 
 Treasurer was sent to the Tower ; while angry votes 
 against the ' horrible and treasonable Popish plot ' cul- 
 minated in what were now open attempts to alter the 
 succession to the Crown. 
 
 Temple appears to have been touched by the ' miser- 
 able condition of the King's affairs,'^ and Charles, by 
 dint of adroit flattery, and by skilfully working on his 
 compassion for a Sovereign in difficulties, and on his 
 pride at being apparently offered Danby 's post as con- 
 fidential Minister, at length persuaded the reluctant 
 diplomat to lend the prestige of his name to a discredited 
 Administration. 
 
 Temple was now on the threshold of what he called 
 the * cockpit '^ of home politics. He was at last and 
 unwillingly entangled in the heated factions of a Parha- 
 ment where the temporary agreement of the old ' Country 
 Party ' with the Whigs against Danby had been changed 
 into bitter hostility on the subject of the succession to the 
 Crown. On the one side was the party led by Halifax, 
 who proposed to 'limit' the power of James, and to 
 turn England into a virtual republic by handing over 
 to Parliament the executive functions of the Crown ; on 
 the other were the adherents of the Shaftesbury-Sach- 
 everell scheme of excluding altogether any but a Pro- 
 
 1 T.W.. i. 333. 
 
 2 Temple to the Lord Treasurer, February 28, 1679. 
 
54 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 testant King, who could be trusted to exercise the func- 
 tions of royalty in a constitutional spirit. In either plan 
 there was great peril. In the former lay the future 
 danger of James proving a non-compliant Catholic ; in 
 the latter the present danger that in Monmouth a choice 
 would be made of an unworthy Protestant. 
 
 From a Parliament inflamed by such questions Charles 
 could expect little. All he could do was to gain time till 
 divisions among his enemies and restored unity among 
 his friends should cause a reaction in his favour. A 
 Fabian game was his obvious policy, and he played it 
 with consummate skill. Amid the turmoil of a frenzied 
 Opposition his natural coolness, his imperturbable good- 
 nature, and his seeming cheerful indifference to all 
 troubles, helped him to tide over the time of stress which 
 lay between him and his revenge. 
 
 His first move in the subtle policy which underlay his 
 apparent inaction was a scheme of which the suggestion 
 has been generally attributed to Temple. The late Am- 
 bassador tells us how he was dismayed at the growing 
 influence of the * Exclusionists,' and how he resolved if 
 possible to break the power of the men who threatened 
 injury to the prospects of the Prince of Orange by play- 
 ing on the King's affection for the Duke of Monmouth. 
 But he saw no one capable of successfully confronting 
 the Whigs, and he realized that the Crown had, for the 
 present, too little authority safely to dissolve a Parlia- 
 ment whose violence was getting beyond bounds, or 
 safely to rule without one ' till the present humours might 
 cool.'^ He therefore proposed, he tells us, to form a new 
 Privy Council of thirty members, of which half were to 
 be the chief officers of State, and half of those indepen- 
 dent members who had ' most credit and sway in both 
 1 T. W., i. 33S. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 55 
 
 Houses,'^ and who would be able to give popular weight 
 to the Government without being sufficiently numerous 
 to divert it from its course. An important point in the 
 scheme was that it sought to put into practice the widely 
 prevalent theory that authority should be dependent on 
 the amount of landed property. The new Council was, 
 therefore, to be composed of men whose revenues should 
 act as a counterpoise to the wealth of the House of 
 Commons, and who would even be able, at a pinch, to 
 relieve the necessities of the Crown out of their own 
 purses. The new body was to supersede both the exist- 
 ing Privy Council of fifty members and the small interior 
 Council which, under Charles' rule, had been allowed to 
 concentrate in its hands the powers of the larger body. 
 There was to be no * Cabal,' much less a second Clarendon 
 or Danby ; but the King was to pledge himself to rule by 
 the advice of the new * Constitution,' as Temple calls it, 
 and to undertake no important step without its concur- 
 rence. 
 
 Such, in outline, is the scheme which was to give to 
 the leaders of the Opposition a share in the Administra- 
 tion which might lessen their attacks on the Crown and 
 the Crown's Prerogative. An examination of its incep- 
 tion and working brings before us three problems : Who 
 was its author ? what was its real nature and scope ? 
 why did it fail ? 
 
 To the first question the traditional answer, and the 
 answer of the new Minister, is — Sir William Temple. 
 * These considerations cast me upon the thoughts of a 
 new Council. . . . This whole matter was consulted 
 and deduced upon paper only between the King and 
 me. . . . The King resolved that I should go, and com- 
 municated the whole scheme to Finch, Sunderland, and 
 1 T. W., i. zzZ' 
 
56 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 Essex.' ^ Temple's whole life would give the lie to a sug- 
 gestion that he wilfully perverted the truth in these 
 statements, but his own writings give a possibility of 
 truth to the idea that, in claiming the whole credit for 
 the new scheme, he may have been deceived by his own 
 vanity, and by the subtle policy of a crafty King. 
 Many readers of Temple's Memoirs will come to the 
 conclusion that the writer was not without a touch of 
 megalomania and egotism, and was rather inclined to 
 make most of his geese swans, and most of his diplo- 
 matic feats epoch-making. They will discern the pride 
 which is but thinly disguised by his mock-modest dis- 
 claimers of merit, and the vanity which blinds him to 
 the fact that, in the diplomatic game, the moving force 
 is after all the King or Minister who pulls the wires, 
 rather than the Ambassador-puppet, dance he never so 
 gracefully. Out of this conceit Charles would have been 
 quick to realize the possibility of making capital, just as 
 he had been quick to make capital out of the self- 
 importance of Buckingham in the ' Traite Simule.' 
 
 Again, Temple was a picturesque figure with which 
 to secure popular approval, but he was rather a 
 speculative student than a practical politician, and was 
 too conscientious to be allowed altogether behind the 
 scenes. The advice of a more adroit and unscrupulous 
 Minister was required ; and the man who filled this want, 
 who appears alone to have really shared in the secrets 
 of Charles' policy, and who ought to share in the credit 
 or blame for the new Council, was Sunderland. 
 
 This statesman had been appointed as Secretary of 
 
 State early in February, 1679. ^^ character he was the 
 
 very opposite of Temple, and was therefore much more 
 
 suitable as a partner in the King's designs. He was a 
 
 1 T. W., i. 333-S34' 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 57 
 
 * Proteus ever acting in disguise, a finished statesman, 
 intricately wise V he was brilliant, unscrupulous, and 
 dissolute, and as inveterate a gambler in politics as at 
 the tables. He was related to Shaftesbury, in close 
 touch with the Opposition, and quite ready to betray 
 their secrets, or historians have done him an injustice. 
 Also, the new plan seems to postulate some degree of 
 previous understanding with that Opposition — the Whig 
 leader might well have quoted ' Timeo Danaos ' if he had 
 suddenly been proffered an unexplained gift by Charles 
 — and Sunderland was as obviously a suitable go-between 
 as Temple was an unsuitable one. True, the former 
 professed equal amazement and pleasure at the official 
 communication of the new scheme,^ but what would be 
 an easier form of duplicity to a * Proteus ' ? That shrewd 
 observer Algernon Sidney, in writing to his friend Savile, 
 said : * The King certainly inclines not to be so stiff as 
 formerly in advancing only those that exalt prerogative '; 
 and stated as his own opinion on the new Council, and 
 as the opinion generally held in Parliament, that ' Sunder- 
 land is the author of all this.'^ 
 
 It indeed seems clear that, behind the simple-minded, 
 honest litterateur, there was a more practical and facile 
 statesman assisting Charles to fit Temple's doctrinaire 
 scheme to the needs of the moment. It was Sunderland 
 who took the initiative in opening negotiations with 
 Essex, an avowed recruit of the Country Party.* It was 
 Sunderland who agreed with suspicious alacrity to 
 Charles' attitude on the question of the personnel of the 
 new Council, when the admission of Halifax was long 
 
 1 Dryden, ' Faction Displayed,' State Poems, 1716, iv. 90. 
 
 2 T. W., i. 334. 
 
 3 Savile Correspondence, p. 16, April 21, 1679. 
 * Foxcroft, • Halifax,' i. 145. 
 
58 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 ' kicked at,' but Shaftesbury, the head and front of all 
 offences against the Crown, was, in face of Temple's 
 protests, not only included, but even made President.^ 
 It was Sunderland who proposed to Temple a confidential 
 alliance for the harmonious working of the new scheme, 
 with a readiness to violate one of its fundamental prin- 
 ciples that seems to argue some secret understanding 
 with Charles, and with an assurance which seems to 
 show that he considered himself as at least equally 
 responsible for its success.^ It was Sunderland who 
 suggested the inclusion of his latest recruit — Essex ;' 
 who strenuously, though it must be confessed unsuccess- 
 fully, opposed Temple's proposed addition of the chief 
 * Limitationist ' — Halifax ;* who finally suggested, and 
 insisted on, the admission of the High-Priests of Exclu- 
 sion — Shaftesbury and Monmouth.^ 
 
 After-events also proved that Temple had not really 
 been admitted into the King's confidence. The new 
 Council was officially promulgated on April 21, and on 
 May 27 Parliament was prorogued, with the advice of 
 Sunderland, but without Temple being consulted.^ On 
 October 15 a prorogation for a year was suddenly an- 
 nounced in the Council, with Sunderland's approval, but 
 to the astonishment and disgust of Temple,'^ 
 
 Finally, Temple himself, in his Memoirs, recedes at 
 least twice from the position as sole author of the scheme 
 in which he took such pride. He speaks of the authors 
 of the new Constitution incurring the enmity of Shaftes- 
 
 1 T.W., i. 334. 
 
 2 Ihid., p. 336 {cp. Sunderland's proposals for the construction 
 of a homogeneous Cabinet Council to James II. in 1688, and to 
 William III. in 1694. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 336. 4 Ibid. 
 
 B Ibid., p. 337. « Ibid., p. 338. 
 
 7 Ibid., p. 346. Foxcroft, ' Halifax,' i. 196. 
 
1 ur4WER 
 
 
 o^ 
 
 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 59 
 
 bury by gaining an unduly large share of credit with the 
 King ; and though the plural may be merely a clerical 
 error, the idea that it was more probably a slip of the 
 pen, caused by a temporarily unguarded vanity, is 
 strengthened by the fact that on another page we find 
 Temple complaining that all the blame for the failure 
 of the new Council was being laid on his shoulders, and 
 rather characteristically trying to shift the responsibility 
 on to Sunderland and Essex, without whose help ' to 
 finish the draft of it, the thing had certainly died.'^ 
 
 Although some of these facts may have been mere co- 
 incidences, we cannot help coming to the conclusion that, 
 in the aggregate, they point to the authorship of the new 
 scheme as being twofold ; we cannot help thinking that 
 they point to doctrinaire Temple as the author of an 
 attempted permanent constitutional change, but to 
 practical Sunderland as responsible for a temporary 
 change of Ministers for political reasons. 
 
 In discussing the nature of the new Privy Council, it is 
 therefore necessary to differentiate between the two 
 views it represents. As a constitutional change, it has 
 been criticised at length by Macaulay, who comes to the 
 conclusion that its intended scope must be looked for in 
 one of only two possible directions — Cabinet Govern- 
 ment ; or, in the words of Barillon, ' des Etats, non des 
 Conseils.' The former he rightly rejects, but for what 
 seem to us mistaken reasons. He dismisses the idea that 
 Temple could have designed the Council on the lines of a 
 Cabinet, because it was too big, and had no chance of 
 securing the necessary qualities of unity, secrecy, and 
 expedition. But in this criticism Macaulay appears to 
 have been looking at the eighteenth-century scheme with 
 nineteenth-century eyes. He seems to have judged the 
 1 T. w., i. 345. 
 
6o SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 action of Temple by a standard of political knowledge 
 which was far out of the reach of politicians in the reign 
 of Charles II. England has more or less consistently 
 followed the Platonic maxim that infinite time is the 
 best maker of States, and in 1679 she was still engaged 
 in broadening her interpretation of the nation's tradi- 
 tional poUty to crush the Crown's traditional Preroga- 
 tive. The framework of our Constitution was still un- 
 fixed, and there were but the faintest outlines of the 
 central figure in its future elaboration. The King was 
 still expected to govern in person, with the help of his 
 Ministers in their respective provinces, and with the 
 advice of his Privy Council in questions of general policy. 
 So far from the Councillors being expected to agree with 
 one another in political views, they were still considered 
 as being, and in practice actually were, an advisory 
 rather than a governing body, and divergence of opinions 
 would be thought to help rather than hinder the King, 
 by presenting him with a greater choice of suggested 
 reforms. Temple, then, could not, and did not, aim at 
 Cabinet government. On the contrary, his scheme, so 
 far from foreshadowing our modern convention, was an 
 attempt to check its growth ; for it aimed at preventing 
 the concentration of power into the hands of small com- 
 mittees, and in this respect may be classed with the 
 Privy Council clause in the Act of Settlement. 
 
 Macaulay's alternative to Cabinet government seems 
 to us equally untenable. The primary reason for the 
 production of a new constitutional scheme was a desire 
 to check the growing disorders of Parliament, of a body 
 of men arrogant with newly acquired political strength, 
 and led by political incendiaries who sought to burn out 
 a path to power even over the sacred rights of hereditary 
 succession. How could Temple have hoped for the 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 6i 
 
 acquiescence of such a Parliament in what was practi- 
 cally its own extinction ? Above all, how could he have 
 hoped for the success of a potential oligarchy which left 
 out of its consideration the most strenuous and dan- 
 gerous leader in the country ? We cannot help thinking 
 that Macaulay took Temple's remarks too much au pied de 
 la lettre, and that he was somewhat deluded by the grandi- 
 loquence of a vain statesman who overloaded his scheme 
 with the high-sounding and ominous title, ' This New 
 Constitution.' We think that the design of the new Privy 
 Council was much more simple and less subtle than 
 Macaulay and others would make it appear. 
 
 Unfortunately, we have no record of Temple's confer- 
 ences with the King to tell us how far the published 
 scheme was a compromise between theory and expedi- 
 ency ; but, judging of it as given to Parliament,^ it would 
 appear to have been merely an attempt to restore to 
 something like its former importance, but on a more 
 popular and representative basis, the old Privy Council. 
 This body had fallen from the position it had held under 
 the Tudors ; it had become unwieldy in size owing to 
 Crown nominations, and its power had been sapped by 
 interior committees and by single omnipotent Ministers. 
 The impeachments of Clarendon and Danby and the un- 
 popularity of the Cabal had made it necessary to dis- 
 cover some means for bringing Ministers into closer 
 correspondence, and, if possible, on better terms with 
 Parliament. The pressing question was how to har- 
 monize the relations of the Executive with a Legislature 
 which was absorbing more and more control in the State. 
 Temple's scheme, therefore, was an attempt to interfere 
 between King and Parliament ; an attempted compro- 
 mise between the former's hereditary right to appoint 
 ^ Appendix to Memoirs CT. W,, i. 361). 
 
62 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 Ministers and the latter 's right to control them. It was to 
 provide a kind of half-way house between the two powers 
 — a house in which the advisory powers of the old Privy 
 Council should join hands with the executive powers of 
 the Crown ; in which the advice proffered by the new 
 Councillors should have the additional weight of con- 
 centration and formality, and the advice asked by the 
 King should be regularly obtainable from statesmen of 
 all persuasions, whose wealth removed them from the 
 more pressing dangers of corruption, and whose patriot- 
 ism would not be sapped by jealousies of a single Minister 
 or small clique of Ministers. Unlike the old Privy 
 Council, it was to be moderate and constant in size, 
 moderate and constant in power. Unlike the modern 
 Cabinet or the modern Privy Council, it was to be neither 
 wholly official nor partly ornamental ; it was to give the 
 King fixed ministers,^ but not a fixed Ministry ; com- 
 pulsory advisers, but not compulsory advice. 
 
 The scheme, viewed from Sunderland's point of view, 
 may be described more shortly and with more certainty. 
 Charles was engaged in marking time. He had to face a 
 hostile Parliament, but there were signs of a coming re- 
 action. The frenzy of the Poplish plot was dying down, 
 and while the friends of the Court were beginning to 
 unite, its enemies were quarrelhng and becoming divided. 
 The King might have paraphrased Queen Ehzabeth's 
 remark as ' Time and I against the ParHament,' and he 
 was willing to accept any scheme which would tempor- 
 arily subdue the dangerous voices of the Whig leaders. 
 Sunderland was therefore encouraged to mould Temple's 
 scheme into a form in which it might prove an effective 
 
 ^ Fixed ministers in the sense of formal advisory servants of 
 the Crown, not in the sense of Ministers holding official adminis- 
 trative posts. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 63 
 
 sop with which to quiet the cries for exclusion. As a 
 temporary scheme, it was therefore directed along the 
 line of least resistance, and was framed to draw within 
 its quieting effect the chief representatives of all parties 
 — ^Tories, Limitationists, and Whig-Exclusionists. Doc- 
 trinaire Temple may have aimed at a new and perma- 
 nent constitutional reform ; but Sunderland, the oppor- 
 tunist, merely wanted a new but temporary body of 
 Ministers to act as a stopgap.^ 
 
 Both men failed to attain their objects. The reasons 
 for failure will appear too clearly in the history of the 
 new Council, but it may be briefly stated here that, 
 theoretically, it was bound to fail, because it was based 
 on the fundamental error of implied antagonism between 
 the Executive and the Legislature ; and because a body 
 of thirty, representative of every interest and most 
 political opinions, was not likely to be an efficient ad- 
 ministrative body, whatever might be its merits as a 
 debating society.^ Practically, it was doomed to failure, 
 because Charles refused from the first to have his hands 
 tied by his new set of advisers f because the sop failed 
 to quieten ; because the Parliamentary j ealousies and 
 quarrels, instead of being lessened, were only increased 
 and accentuated in the narrower body ; because Ex- 
 clusionist and Limitationist were still further from one 
 another in a disunited Council than they had been in a 
 factious Parliament. 
 
 ^ ' Sperando che sodisfatta la loro ambitione di governare e con 
 ammetterli al maneggio degli affari si plachino.' — Sarotti. 
 
 2 Anson, ii. 97. 
 
 3 ' God's fish,' Charles said to his friend Bruce, ' they have put 
 a set of men about me, but they shall know nothing, and this keep 
 to yourself (Airy, p. 239). 
 
' Une bonne intention est une echelle trop courte.' 
 
 It would seem as if any great public scheme to which 
 Temple put his hand was as bound to end in failure as 
 it was bound to be greeted at first Vith popular approval. 
 When the new Privy Council began its official existence, 
 on April 21, 1679, i^ was welcomed with general applause 
 and rejoicings in England and Ireland, while in Holland 
 an immediate rise in the funds showed that the Dutch 
 had not lost their trust in the author of the Triple Alli- 
 ance. The House of Commons, on the other hand, 
 received with coldness what the more knowing members 
 shrewdly, and not altogether incorrectly, suspected of 
 being *a new Court juggle;'* while Temple himself, 
 naturally sanguine as he was, had become so hopeless of 
 success since the inclusion of Shaftesbury that he seri- 
 ously thought of rendering himself incapable of taking 
 ofhce by omitting to pass the Sacramental * Test ' within 
 the time appointed by law — a rather dishonourable 
 intention from which he was only dissuaded by the 
 entreaties of his wife and sister.^ 
 
 Temple's forebodings were soon realized, but he him- 
 self was partly responsible for the first retrograde step. 
 Within a week after the public institution of the new 
 Council the old conditions were revived, and a small 
 ' foreign committee ' to consult upon the chief affairs 
 1 T. W., i. 335. 2 ji,id^ 
 
 64 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 65 
 
 ' that were then on the anvil ' was formed by Sunderland, 
 Halifax, Essex, and Temple.^ The suggestion came 
 from the first-named, and though Temple made a feeble 
 protest against this violation of the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of the new scheme, he yielded with an ease which 
 gives rather a shock to our opinion of his consistency, 
 and almost a flavour of truth to the alternative contained 
 in his remark that * we four were either the four 
 honestest men in England or the greatest knaves.' 
 Whether honest men or knaves, they at first agreed to- 
 gether perfectly. Signs of falling out, however, came 
 with Sunderland's proposal to admit Shaftesbury and 
 Monmouth, the leading Exclusionists, and the very men 
 with whom loyal Temple had steadily refused to treat. 
 But the enlarged committee soon divided into hostile 
 camps. A split was indeed inevitable, for there was no 
 chance of unanimity on the burning question of the day. 
 The new Council had signally failed to quieten the voices 
 of the Exclusionists. A week after its institution 
 Russell, one of Shaftesbury's confidants, brought before 
 the House of Lords a resolution passed by the Commons 
 which clearly foreshadowed the coming Exclusion Bill.^ 
 
 ^ T. W., i. 336. It has been suggested that historians have 
 followed Temple's own account of this committee, and have been 
 misled into taking it as a sort of Cabinet or Cabal ; forgetting that 
 it was a mere private conclave, not selected by the King, and 
 probably paralleled by a similar Exclusionist conciliabulum. 
 That the ' committee ' was informally instituted seems true ; 
 but, if we are to believe Temple — and his veracity about bare 
 facts has not been called in question — it is certain that the 
 ' Triumvirate ' soon monopolized the King's confidence, and had 
 as much administrative locus standi as any previous Crown- 
 appointed Cabal : it is also certain that Shaftesbury realized its 
 importance when he sought and obtained temporary admission in 
 it for himself and Monmouth. 
 
 2 Foxcroft, 'Halifax,' i. 151. 
 
 5 
 
66 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 Halifax objected furiously/ and round this statesman 
 was now crystallized the opposition to the Whig policy. 
 The reasons for the strong opposition of the ' Trimmer ' 
 to Exclusion are not altogether obvious, but his character 
 to some extent helps us to a clue. Halifax was a states- 
 man at once temperate, cultured, and versatile ; with a 
 courtly suavity of manner, enlivened by a keen sense of 
 humour ; with rare powers of eloquence enhancing rare 
 powers of reasoning ; but with a speculative and philoso- 
 phical mind which made him ' trim ' between the parties 
 of liberty and dominion, which made him a mediator 
 among the ambitious, a moderate among the factious, 
 and a placable enemy, though an uncertain friend. He 
 was a man who would theoretically advocate an oligar- 
 chic commonwealth, and practically resent as an aristo- 
 crat the raising of a bastard to the throne ; who would 
 theoretically object to interference with individual rights, 
 and practically wish to limit political powers which were 
 pregnant with danger to the nation. 
 
 At the side of Halifax were now ranged honest and 
 earnest Essex, whose * conscientious scruples '^ against 
 Exclusion had not yet been overcome by the Whigs ; 
 and Sunderland, the 'second Machiavel,'^ who was 
 always ready to join the party which seemed the 
 stronger. This Triumvirate was reinforced after his 
 own wary fashion by Temple, and became as powerful 
 in the Privy Council as Shaftesbury was in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 In May came a crisis. The violence of the Whigs, 
 which had been quietened for a time by the new 
 measure, was now redoubled. Charles tried to calm the 
 storm by offering to yield to the ' limiting * policy of 
 
 1 Burnet, ii. 212. 2 Jhid., ii. 210. 
 
 3 Dryden, ' Faction Displayed' ('State Poems,' 1716, iv. 90). 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 67 
 
 Halifax, but his compromise was angrily rejected, and 
 on May 22 a resolution was passed in favour of a Bill 
 * to disable the Duke of York to inherit the Imperial 
 Crown of England.' Five days later the King's answer 
 came in the sudden prorogation of Parliament — a blow 
 to Shaftesbury's plans which wrung from that usually 
 self-restrained statesman the savage remark that ' he 
 would have the head of the man who had given such 
 advice.'^ It was quite obvious now that the Trium- 
 virate alone had the ear of the King, and it was equally 
 obvious that the new Council was doomed when so early 
 in its life a supremely important question was settled 
 without its concurrence or advice. 
 
 During the recess the disputes between the two parties 
 went on in the Privy Council with ever-increasing 
 acrimony, and the small touch of comedy which had 
 lightened the last session — when one * very fat lord ' ^ 
 was counted as ten, to enable Shaftesbury to gain at any 
 rate one pure title to renown by passing the famous 
 Habeas Corpus Act — found no parallel during a period of 
 general ill-humour and gloom. Even the Triumvirate 
 and Temple had differences, for the latter — honest man — 
 was firm in refusing to countenance the persecution of 
 the Papists for a plot which he knew to be false, and 
 equally firm in refusing to put his feet more deeply into 
 the mud by accepting the post of Secretary.^ 
 
 The political atmosphere became still more heavily 
 charged when Monmouth returned to London in June, 
 with his pretensions to the throne in place of James 
 intensified by a successful campaign in Scotland against 
 
 1 T. W., i. 338. 
 
 2 Burnet, ii. 264. Probably a fiction, but the depressed 
 reader of 1679 history cannot afford to lose it. 
 
 3 T. W., i. 339. 
 
 5-2 
 
68 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 the victims of Lauderdale. It now became a serious 
 question with the King's advisers as to whether it would 
 be safe to allow Shaftesbury's hot indignation an oppor- 
 tunity of flaming out in the present Parliament. The 
 prorogation was due to expire in October, but Charles 
 and the Triumvirate agreed that anew House of Commons 
 could not be more, and might be less, refractory. They 
 therefore determined on an immediate dissolution. On 
 July 3 this decision was announced to the Privy Council,^ 
 and was followed by an outburst of indignant remon- 
 strances, led by the Lord Chancellor, and followed up by 
 Shaftesbury 'in the most tragical terms. '^ The King, 
 however, was unmoved by the opinions of a Council 
 which had no power to enforce the spirit of the new 
 compromise, and it was too late for Temple to change 
 once more from the side of expediency to that of consis- 
 tency. He made a short and hesitating speech in favour 
 of the King's Prerogative, and thus helped to give the 
 deathblow to a measure from which he had hoped so 
 much, and which he had done so little to sustain. The 
 dissolution of Parliament only postponed the danger of 
 the Exclusion Bill, but it permanently destroyed all the 
 hopes raised by the new Privy Council, and sent it to 
 join the long line of constitutional expedients which had 
 been abandoned before they had been fairly tried. 
 
 The new Parliament was summoned for the following 
 October, and at the ensuing elections Temple was chosen 
 for the University of Cambridge, the only serious objec- 
 tion to his candidature coming from the Bishop of Ely, 
 who had persuaded himself that the religious toleration 
 described in Temple's ' Observations on the Netherlands ' 
 represented the personal opinions of the writer. 
 
 Meanwhile the common cares ' of administration 
 1 Henry Sidney, i. 21. 2 x. W., i. 341. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 69 
 
 were in the hands of the Triumvirate. Temple had early 
 begun to neglect all but the official meetings of the Privy 
 Council. Gardening had greater attractions for him 
 than politics, his adhesion to his friends' policy was more 
 wary than whole-hearted, and it was obvious that he was 
 no longer in their entire confidence. His ornamental 
 part in the political game had been played, and in the 
 complexities and hazards of the present troubled situa- 
 tion his unambitious caution and halting resolution made 
 him more of an encumbrance than a help. 
 
 As the summer declined the Triumvirate found them- 
 selves faced by a threatened crisis. The King suddenly 
 became dangerously ill. His death was hourly expected. 
 Wild rumours spread about that the Whigs were pre- 
 paring to keep James out of the throne by the use of the 
 royal forces which Monmouth now controlled. The 
 Tories had no unity, no leader, no cause, and with 
 feverish anxiety expected the worst. The Triumvirate • 
 met in hurried and secret conclave. James, who had 
 been exiled to Brussels in the vain hope that his absence 
 might allay the fear and hatred of his enemies, was 
 hastily summoned to England, with careful instructions 
 to make his return appear spontaneous. He arrived at 
 Windsor on August 28, but by that time the King was 
 much better, and though the secret was well kept, ancP 
 Charles played up to his advisers by greeting his brother 
 with well-feigned surprise, the Triumvirate were alarmed 
 and ashamed at their precipitance. 
 
 Temple had been roused from his retirement at Sheen 
 by the ominous reports about the King, but he was easily 
 persuaded by his nominal colleagues that the danger was 
 exaggerated, and contentedly returned to his orchards. 
 It was only by chance that he became aware of the 
 Duke's arrival in London, and he at once hurried to see 
 
70 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 the Triumvirate, expecting them to be equally surprised 
 and discomfited with himself. They made no attempts 
 to undeceive him. Essex pretended to be equally aston- 
 ished and alarmed, but could not disguise a sneering 
 smile. Sunderland, as might have been expected, was 
 quite equal to the occasion, and * talked deep into 
 nothing '; while Halifax, with a keen sense of the humour 
 of the situation, lifted up his hands and eyes in mock 
 dismay, and would like to know what it all meant.^ 
 
 Temple's misgivings were now aroused, and his vanity 
 hurt by the behaviour of his friends ; but he could get 
 nothing out of Sunderland but hypocritical commisera- 
 tion, nothing out of Halifax but humorous persiflage 
 and a recommendation to go back to his melons. He 
 was soon, however, to be given a stronger proof of the 
 fact that he had lost the confidence, not only of his 
 friends, but of the King. 
 
 Charles had made a rapid recovery, and the tension 
 in the country had relaxed, but the short time of terrible 
 anxiety, and the fear that the Whig plans carried with 
 them the danger of civil war, had at last roused the 
 sluggish Tories. The King saw signs of a coming reaction 
 in his favour, and he was encouraged to take a bolder 
 line of policy and a new set of advisers. There was little 
 love lost between the Triumvirate and the Duke of York, 
 and their summons to him had been but the counsel of 
 despair. They had scored a decided success in persuad- 
 ing Charles to compromise matters by banishing both 
 James and Monmouth, but the former had another shaft 
 in his quiver, and his reappearance in England on 
 October 13, followed two days later by the dismissal 
 of Shaftesbury from the Privy Council, proved that, in 
 the words of a contemporary, ' the Duke's party now 
 1 T. W., i. 343. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 71 
 
 governs.'^ Halifax retired to his country seat at Ruf- 
 ford; Essex resigned, to the 'horrible vexation,'^ real 
 or feigned, of Charles ; but Sunderland, ready as ever, 
 became at once as strong a pro- Yorkist as his fellow 
 ' Chits,' Hyde and Godolphin. 
 
 The result of the new regime was seen in the first 
 meeting of the Council which Temple had attended since 
 his election. It was nearly time for the meeting of the 
 new Parliament, in which there was to be a nucleus of a 
 Court party, but still an overwhelming number of Whigs. 
 Temple came to London, and had a friendly interview 
 with the King and Sunderland, but no public business 
 was discussed ; and when Charles cast a bombshell into 
 the midst of the Council by suddenly declaring his deter- 
 mination to prorogue the newly-elected Parliament, no 
 one was more stunned by surprise than Temple. Several 
 members rose, and would have argued against the King's 
 decision ; but Charles would hear no objections, and 
 declared that his resolution was unalterable. Temple 
 had acquiesced in the previous dissolution, but the voice 
 of his conscience was now sharpened by wounded vanity, 
 and with belated vigour he took up the cudgels on behalf 
 of the ill-treated Council. He would not, he said, disobey 
 the King by reasoning against the proposed dissolution, 
 but he would earnestly advise His Majesty, if the present 
 Council was unsuitable in personnel or numbers, to dis- 
 solve it and appoint another ; for to make Councillors 
 who were not permitted to counsel was contrary to pre- 
 cedent and contrary to sense. To this reproof Charles 
 listened with his usual good nature, but Sunderland 
 showed great resentment, and threatened to take the 
 petty revenge of withholding the money due from the 
 
 ^ Savile Correspondence, November 15. 
 2 Sidney, November 16. 
 
72 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 Treasury to the late Ambassador. Temple, with equal 
 heat, retorted that, if he had been treated with confi- 
 dence, he would not have opposed the King — a not very 
 creditable admission of pique. ^ 
 
 Temple now resolved to retire altogether from politics. 
 But the fact that Russell and three other principal Whigs 
 pointed their disapproval of the King's high-handed 
 action by personally handing in their resignations as 
 Councillors, and that Essex and Halifax expressed their 
 indignation in the same, though not in such an open, 
 way, induced Temple to continue his attendance at 
 Court. * I resolved to go again to Council,' he says, 
 ' to show that I had not herded with those that had left 
 it, and that my leaving it too might not occasion some 
 men's greater distaste at the Government ';^ but his 
 action, coming as it did after his speech in Council and 
 his remark to Sunderland, lays him open to the suspicion 
 of having wished to turn the opportunity to account for 
 reinstating himself in the royal favour and confidence. 
 But Sunderland was now head of a new Triumvirate, 
 and though his anger towards Temple had cooled, he 
 gave him kindness but no confidence. The post of Secre- 
 tary again fell vacant, but Temple was no longer pressed 
 to take office, and it was obvious that he had now no 
 share in the direction of public affairs. 
 
 Meanwhile, the fury of the Whigs was redoubled by 
 the thought of the closed doors at Westminster. The 
 air was thick with addresses and counter-addresses from 
 * Petitioners ' and ' Abhorrers,' and the streets were 
 filled with excited crowds, who groaned at the painted 
 effigies of Papists, wept over the counterfeit presentment 
 of Godfrey, and cheered the living idol who was so soon 
 to see his ambitions quenched in the ditches of Sedge- 
 
 1 T. W., i. 346. 2 Ilyi^^^ p. 347, 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 73 
 
 moor. The whole nation was convulsed with party 
 spirit, and while the Tory party began to hold up its 
 head under the stimulating stress of national conflict, 
 the bold leadership of Shaftesbury attracted to his side 
 many of the Moderates who had hitherto resisted being 
 drawn into the vortex of the popular movement. The 
 audacious public presentment of James to the Grand 
 Jury in Westminster Hall as a Popish Recusant, and 
 the simultaneous indictment of the King's Popish mis- 
 tress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, as a * common 
 nuisance,' brought the latter in affright to the side of 
 the Exclusionists. She was quickly followed by her 
 ally Sunderland, who, as ever, was on the look-out for a 
 place on the winning side ; while Essex, always at heart 
 a Whig, was at length persuaded to join the counsels of 
 the Opposition. Godolphin followed suit, and even the 
 King himself was said to have begun to waver under 
 the influence of the renegade ' Madame Carwell.'^ On 
 the other hand, Halifax was drawn from his retirement 
 to aid the weaker side, for his hatred of Shaftesbury 
 and his policy was stronger than his detestation of 
 James. 
 
 The attitude of Temple was characteristic. In public, 
 and even in his Memoirs, he maintained a cautious 
 neutrality ; but there are indications in contemporary 
 letters that his real opinion was that the passing of the 
 Exclusion Bill was a foregone conclusion, and that a 
 complete surrender to the Parliamentary majority was 
 the only way in which to effect a reconciliation between 
 the Court and the people, and the indispensable pre- 
 liminary for a strong foreign policy.^ 
 
 In October, 1680, the prorogation expired. The Whigs 
 assembled with fierce anticipations of revenge, and 
 1 Foxcroft, 'Halifax,' i. 235. 2 ibid. 
 
74 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 Temple took his seat, for the first time, in his country's 
 representative assembly. But any hopes or ambitions 
 he may have had for Parliamentary distinction had long 
 since been killed by the chilling air of a Court where he 
 now met with nothing but indifference. In the con- 
 genial spheres of diplomacy and political speculation he 
 had been of some account. He was now a nonentity, 
 and distinction and praise were to him as the breath of 
 his nostrils. He had been willing to enter a scene which 
 was distasteful to his somewhat timid and ease-loving 
 nature at the bidding of a King to whom he was genuinely 
 loyal ; but, in the face of royal indifference, he had 
 neither the ambition to carve out a course for himself 
 nor the strength of will to unsheathe a solitary sword 
 against odds. He indeed made some small attempts at 
 diplomacy, and in at any rate one speech pleaded for 
 moderation and a more conciliatory spirit ;^ but during 
 his one troubled session at Westminster he remained, 
 on the whole, purely passive. Hyde asked him one day 
 why he came so seldom to House or Council. Temple 
 replied that he was following Solomon's advice ' neither 
 to oppose the mighty, nor go about to stop the current 
 of a river.' ^ Hyde probably had some feeling of con- 
 tempt in his heart when he answered : ' You are a wise 
 and a quiet man,' and, indeed, we cannot help a feeling 
 of disappointment that the hero of the Triple Alliance 
 should have been content to sit still in these stirring 
 times without striking one blow for his side, and should 
 have been unable to describe the climax of the Exclusion 
 struggle because 'he was not at the House.' ^ The all- 
 
 1 ' I am tender of anything that may happen of ill-conse- 
 quence to break the happy union betwixt the King and you * 
 (Gray's 'Debates,' viii. 21). 
 
 2 T.W., i. 352. 3 Ibid., p. 351. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 75 
 
 important measure passed triumphantly through the 
 Commons, and was carried ' with a mighty shout ' to 
 the Upper Chamber ; but Temple was at home ' playing 
 a part very impertinent for a man that had any designs 
 or ambitions about him/^ The consummate eloquence 
 of Halifax in the House of Lords carried the waverers 
 against the combined efforts of Shaftesbury, Essex, and 
 Sunderland, and secured the rejection of the Whig Bill ; 
 but Temple ' had no stomach for such business.' ^ The 
 exultant leader of the anti-Exclusionists was impeached 
 ' on common fame '; the venerable Stafford and four 
 other ' Popish Lords ' were sacrificed in an endeavour 
 to appease the wrath of the Commons, but with so little 
 result that Charles had first to prorogue, and a few days 
 later to dissolve, a Parliament whose violence was getting 
 beyond bounds ; but Temple * intended to play no 
 popular games. '^ Charles might well ' seem indifferent * 
 when Temple asked if he wished him to stand for the 
 new Parliament which was soon to meet at Oxford. 
 The help of a man whose ' dare not ' was as decided as 
 his * would ' was hesitating, and whose patriotism was as 
 ineffective as his honesty was inconvenient, was out of 
 place in the counsels of a monarch who was soon to 
 confront an infuriated and armed Parliament, and to 
 beat it down with hands that were heavy with French 
 gold. * I doubt, considering how things stand at this 
 time, that your coming into the House would not be 
 able to do much good,'* was Charles' good-natured 
 remark ; but he showed his contempt for his languid 
 friend by striking his name out of the list of Privy 
 Councillors. For this action Temple professed to be 
 able to find no satisfactory explanation, for his vanity 
 
 1 T. W., i. 351. 2 jiid,, p. 353. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 352. * Ibid., p. 3 5 4. 
 
76 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 forbade his acknowledging that he had been used merely 
 as a tool, that his name had been his only asset, and that 
 his lukewarm and cautious service had all along been 
 estimated at its proper value. 
 
 But Temple had now his heart's desire, and was at 
 liberty to spend the rest of his days with his books and 
 fruit-gardens. * We are, with all the cares and en- 
 deavours of our lives, to avoid diseases in the body, per- 
 turbations in the mind, luxury in diet, factions in the 
 House, and seditions in the State.' This is the quotation 
 with which Temple concludes his Memoirs,^ and he set 
 himself to follow the advice of the old Greek philosopher. 
 Intent on quiet retirement, he exchanged Sheen for the 
 deeper seclusion of Moor Park, and amidst the trim 
 gardens of this new retreat he passed his days undis- 
 turbed except by dim rumours of the dark scenes which 
 followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament ; of 
 the panic of the Whigs and the triumph of the Tories ; 
 of the desperate plots which only ended with the flight 
 of Shaftesbury and the execution of Russell and Sidney ; 
 of the gaols disgorging Catholics, only to be refilled with 
 Dissenters ; and of Charles dying before he had time to 
 enjoy more than a few years of a belated power, but not 
 before he had time to make a belated declaration of his 
 true faith. 
 
 Temple had promised the Duke of York that he would 
 always be ' a legal man, and one that would always 
 follow the Crown as became one';^ and James, on his 
 accession, made him some polite speeches, but respected 
 his reserve. Monmouth's rustic army perished at Sedge- 
 moor, and its leader afterwards died the pitiful death of a 
 coward ; but to the recluse distance softened the terrible 
 news and its more terrible sequel. The outcry of a 
 » T. W., i. 359. ^ Ibid., p. 343. 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 77 
 
 nation whose religion and liberties were trampled on by 
 a Popish tyrant was re-echoed by the Huguenots across 
 the water ; but Temple was strong in his resolution finally 
 to abandon ' all those airy visions which have so long 
 busied my head about mending the world. '^ 
 
 He would be loyal, but with a passive loyalty. He 
 would not help William, but neither would he assist 
 James. He would discuss with the mind of a specula- 
 tive student the questions of * original contract ' and 
 * fundamental laws ' which filled the air at the time of 
 the Revolution ; but his conclusions would only come to 
 light in the privacy of his own study. A short, bloodless 
 struggle might set his old friend the Prince of Orange on 
 the English throne ; but he would not be tempted into 
 active life even under such happy auspices. He would 
 pay the formal court of a loyal subject to a monarch who 
 had become de jure as well as de facto King of England 
 by the abdication of James and the consent of the nation; 
 he would offer the hospitality of a friend to a Prince 
 to whom he was bound by old ties of intimacy ; but he 
 would never again subject himself to the * humours of a 
 Court.' He would allow his son to accept a high post 
 under the new Administration ; but he would be 
 tempted by no offer of the Chief Secretaryship to lay 
 himself once more under the * constraints of public busi- 
 ness.' ' I will be a good subject, but I have done with 
 politics,' was his last message to Charles ; and he kept 
 his word. ' Beatus ille qui procul negotiis.' 
 
 1 T. W., i. 359. 
 
VI 
 
 'And set a double varnish on thy fame.' — Hamlet. 
 
 The influence of France had coloured the whole of 
 Temple's diplomatic career abroad ; it had lain like a 
 shadow over Parliament during his brief political career 
 at home ; it pursued him even when he retired to his 
 study at Moor Park. The country of Louis XIV. had 
 overshadowed Europe in war ; the country of Pascal, 
 Racine, and Moli^re was almost equally dominant in 
 literature. 
 
 In England, indeed, this new supremacy was less 
 willingly and less fully admitted ; but in Europe generally 
 French was fast becoming the universal language, the 
 language of society, and the language of diplomacy. And 
 as French advanced, Latin receded. 
 
 * For, though to smatter words of Greek 
 And Latin be the rhetorique 
 Of pedants counted and vainglorious, 
 To smatter French is meritorious.' 
 
 Thus wrote the author of ' Hudibras,' and his satire 
 faithfully portrayed the tendencies of a world in which a 
 revolution in mind was answering a revolution in 
 manners. 
 
 The time of the Renaissance was ended ; the Classic 
 Age had begun ; and, though there was still room for 
 
 78 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 79 
 
 the great, original genius, who should be stirred by his 
 imagination and the impulse of new ideas to dream, to 
 discover, and to create ; yet the world had, in a measure, 
 satisfied its curiosity, and cried aloud for commentators 
 who should select, classify, and refine its new posses- 
 sions. And with this demand for criticism rather than 
 invention came a demand for a literary style which 
 would suit the new needs. 
 
 The grip of Latin on the prose literature of England, 
 as of Europe, had been slowly relaxing since the Reforma- 
 tion, and experiments in the vernacular demanded by 
 national idiosyncrasy had advanced through the eccen- 
 tricities of Euphuism and Sidneyism to the magnificent 
 English of Milton, Taylor, and Browne ; but the im- 
 passioned, metaphorical, and digressive style, which pro- 
 duced splendid results in the hands of great writers, was 
 not suited to the powers of lesser men, or to the needs 
 of an age which demanded light essays, travels, histories, 
 and novels. 
 
 With the declining influence of the austere and mascu- 
 line tongue of Rome, therefore, came the rising influence 
 of the language the nature of which Guy de Maupassant 
 says is ' d'etre claire, logique et nerveuse ' ; of the language 
 whose exquisite polish suited a world with a desire for 
 clear, convenient, and charming prose growing side by 
 side with its desire for refinement in conversation, 
 manners, and dress. 
 
 But ' Stylus virum arguit,' our style betrays us, and the 
 gain in lucidity and general utility was at first balanced 
 by a loss in originality and power. The public makes a 
 poor taskmaster for the man of letters, and a writer 
 who produces new harmonies on the living keyboard of 
 the English language to suit the ears of a more frivolous 
 audience will be inclined to glide over essentials and to 
 
8o SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 accent trivialities. And the dying-down of the poetic 
 impulse which answered the growth of the new prose 
 had the same debasing effect, for ' eloquence is heard, 
 poetry is overheard,' said Mill ; and with the decline of 
 poetry will often come a decline in sincerity, when an 
 author, instead of finding his true self in the freedom of a 
 soliloquy, appeals to the weak by the rhetorical flourishes 
 of a popular prose. 
 
 In a transition stage, too, the tentative handling of a 
 new medium will make for superficiality. The prose of 
 the last forty years of the seventeenth century was terse, 
 sensible, and modern ; but it was somewhat pedestrian 
 and unimaginative. It had neither the disordered 
 beauties of the age that preceded it nor the limpid 
 grace of that which followed it. The old style, with its 
 interminable sentences and excessive imagery, had been 
 discarded except by a few giant survivals ; but the new 
 style produced results which were at first conventional, 
 cold, and a little bare. 
 
 Temple, perhaps the finest professed prose writer of 
 this transition stage, has left no book which is generally 
 read or even known by name. In his writings, as in his 
 life, there were fine externals, but on a foundation not 
 so fine ; there were dignity and facility, but not much 
 originality of reflection ; there was the varnish of truth, 
 but few new truths. But if we read his essays more 
 for their manner than for their matter, we cannot deny 
 that the manner is very agreeable ; and we cannot forget 
 that he was one of the pioneers of the literary style 
 which has graced the works of all our modern authors. 
 Fashion has had its minor changes ; some few words 
 have become obsolete, some few constructions archaic, 
 and some of what Stevenson called the finite and rigid 
 blocks in the mosaic of our mother-tongue have taken 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 8i 
 
 on different hues ; but the prose style of Temple is still 
 very much akin to that of the twentieth century. Some 
 advances have been made in the sovereign prose quality 
 of limpidity, and we may not be able to follow Swift in 
 his statement that the author of the essay on Gardening 
 had advanced our English tongue to as near perfection 
 as it could well bear ; but we must remember that he 
 was one of the first to give cadence to our language, 
 that he was one of the first great exponents of the 
 * genteel style ' which Lamb praises so delightfully, and 
 that if he did not teach Addison and his compeers to write 
 pure and simple English, he at any rate taught the 
 public to be ready for them. 
 
 But while Temple's writings delight and surprise us 
 chiefly by their modern tone ; while his efforts in litera- 
 ture, like those in diplomacy and speculative politics, 
 derive their chief value in our eyes from the promises to 
 posterity which they contain ; still, we must not under- 
 estimate their intrinsic worth. Where Temple is writing 
 well within his range, where he is using his knowledge 
 of the times, his experience in diplomacy, and his powers 
 of observation, he will receive the praise of present men 
 of letters, as he received the praise of contemporary 
 politicians and peoples. His letters and memoirs are 
 models of their kind, and his ' Observations on the United 
 Provinces' deservedly gained him a high reputation, 
 though they contain the curious error of describing at 
 length the causes of a fall which did not take place. 
 But when Temple found that he could win applause for 
 everything he wrote, he thought he could write on every- 
 thing and still win applause. This led him into waters 
 too deep for him, and endangered his fame ; for if a 
 man who is not a scholar gives a public lecture on 
 scholarship, presuming entirely on his genteel appear- 
 
 6 
 
82 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 ance and elegant delivery, there will be trouble — if there 
 is a Bentley among the audience. 
 
 Even where he tried himself too highly, however. 
 Temple's work was not altogether without value. 
 Though he was not very profound, he at any rate turned 
 his knowledge to good account ; though his thoughts 
 were not very striking, they were at any rate generally 
 just ; while some of the remarks which appear superficial 
 and trite to us were probably quite unfamiliar to his 
 own generation. 
 
 He had, too, a goodly share of common-sense and 
 mother-wit, and though his essays on Government, on 
 Heroic Virtue, and on Poetry may be more suited to the 
 drawing-room than to the study, they contain some not 
 unsound reasoning. His conclusions have been in most 
 cases refuted or excelled, but now and again they have 
 been applauded and adopted. His most serious errors 
 he owed to his vanity. He was enough of a pedant to 
 wish to gain foolish admiration on the principle of ' Scire 
 tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter,' and by dragging 
 in allusions to bygone or mythical heroes he deluded 
 himself and most of his readers into the idea that he 
 knew a good deal of a subject on which he was pro- 
 foundly ignorant. 
 
 His * Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning * 
 sprang out of the famous, but rather futile, controversy 
 which began in France with Perrault and Fontenelle. 
 Temple took the side of the ancients, and his theory — so 
 far as he had any consistent theory — seems to have been 
 that moderns gained all their knowledge from books at 
 the Universities, and that those who trust to the charity 
 of others will always be poor. To the man who had 
 learnt little philosophy and no Greek at Cambridge, and 
 who yet wished to write on any and every subject, the 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 83 
 
 exaltation of invention over learning would naturally 
 appeal ; but when he proceeded to trespass into the 
 domain which he affected to despise, when he pointed 
 his arguments for the ancients with references to the 
 dusty back-files of literature of which he barely knew 
 the headlines, and when his lead was followed by the 
 almost equally ignorant doctors of Christ Church, a real 
 scholar was constrained to break silence. Temple pos- 
 sibly intended his essay for a jeu d'esprit rather than 
 a critical work, and in the ensuing storm of discus- 
 sion on the subject of the letters of Phalaris his own 
 voice was fortunately drowned ; but Bentley spoke 
 of him irreverently, his vanity was hurt, and Swift 
 came to his rescue with the immortal ' Battle of the 
 Books.' 
 
 The raw secretary from Ireland, who spent his time 
 at Moor Park reading in Temple's library, arranging and 
 transcribing Temple's works, and flirting with the future 
 ' Stella, ' had too piercing an insight into shams of all 
 kinds to hold any great opinion of a showy writer who 
 set too high a value upon his real merits ; but Swift's 
 own contempt for pedantry urged him to the defence of 
 his patron. His triumphant piece of wit is the most 
 enduring relic of this famous controversy, but it really 
 weakened the side on which the writer had engaged. 
 Swift could not help himself. The ancients could show 
 no such humour or satire as the ' Tale of a Tub ' and the 
 ' Battle of the Books.' 
 
 It is pleasant to pass from where Temple weakens our 
 admiration to where he increases it. The Letter to the 
 Countess of Essex shows him at his best, and its noble 
 words of consolation, expressed in the most stately 
 rhetoric, will always find it an honoured place amongst 
 the consecrated passages of English prose. In his essay 
 
 6-2 
 
84 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 on Gardening, too, he was helped by the inspiration of a 
 genuine love for his subject. He was not a scientific 
 botanist, indeed, any more than he was a scholar or a 
 competent critic, but he discoursed very fluently and 
 gracefully on the * contrivance and plantation of gar- 
 dens ' ; on the * fruits, flowers, shades, fountains, and the 
 music of birds that frequent such happy places ' ; and 
 on the green walks and airy terraces of ' the pleasantest 
 figure of a garden I ever saw.' But in this essay there is 
 more than graceful descriptions of famous pleasaunces, 
 and courtly advice on the choice and culture of the 
 happy apple. It treats of the beauties of a life in retire- 
 ment, of the Latin poets who sang their sweetest songs 
 in the seclusion of the country, and of the Greek philo- 
 sophers who sought the happiness of virtue amid the 
 quiet trees and the verdure of plants. It was written 
 ■ with the absence of restraint of a writer who was ab- 
 sorbed in his theme, and it reveals to us the writer him- 
 self — his hopes, his fears, and his ideals. The essay on 
 Gardening may fitly be used to illustrate the character 
 of the gardener. 
 
 Temple defended Epicurus, and he did so the more 
 naturally because he himself sought the summum 
 honum of the Greek philosopher. ' When factions were 
 once ended and rooted in a State, they thought it mad- 
 ness for good men to muddle with public affairs,* is what 
 he wrote ; and to retire to Sheen when the agitations of 
 Parliament grew too strong for his comfort was what he 
 did. ' The true service of the public is a business of so 
 much labour and so much care, that though a good man 
 may not refuse it, if he be called to it by his Prince or 
 his country, and thinks he may be more than vulgar use, 
 yet he will seldom or never seek it ' ; and Temple was as 
 constant in his endeavours to avoid the turmoil of the 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 85 
 
 political world as he was irresolute when he had once 
 entered it. 
 
 He had, indeed, much of the weakness as well as much 
 of the strength of his models. He showed their weak- 
 ness in his lack of courage and enthusiasm, in his want of 
 robustness in mind and temperament, and in his dis- 
 inclination to endanger his reputation in the desperate 
 game when politicians threw away their consciences as 
 encumbrances. This makes him appear somewhat cold 
 and selfish, and has laid him open to the charge of having 
 preferred to guard his personal honour rather than the 
 honour of his country. It made his associates, men of 
 sterner stuff, rather despise him as a man who put his 
 own safety before everything ; who would swim in placid 
 waters, but would prefer to stay on the bank rather 
 than breast an angry torrent ; who would keep true to 
 his friends in prosperity, but risk nothing for them in 
 adversity ; who would never join dangerous factions, 
 but would also never openly oppose them. Halifax 
 probably had his exemplary but cautious friend in mind 
 when he wrote the maxim, * He that leaveth nothing to 
 chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few 
 things.' Temple did very few things. Good fortune 
 and his own discernment made him famous as the chief 
 author of the Triple AlHance ; his sincerely held political 
 theories caused him to help in a highly applauded, 
 though ill-fated, attempt to smooth the relations be- 
 tween Crown and Parliament ; but at the first contact 
 with dangers and difficulties he retired, like Epicurus, 
 to his garden. 
 
 A minor weakness is also illustrated in this essay. 
 Temple's vanity is never obtrusive, but is always 
 present — a courtly kind of vanity which almost seems 
 to suit his distinguished manner ; a vanity which made 
 
86 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 him egotistical as a diplomat, and sensitive to slights 
 and indifference at Court ; a vanity which made him in 
 early life somewhat affected in his disclaimers of ability, 
 and in later years somewhat tenacious of his dignity ; a 
 vanity which makes him here complacently compare him- 
 self with some of the greatest men of old, and makes 
 him complacently accept, at their literal value, all the 
 praises which had been accorded to his * peaches and 
 apricocks.' 
 
 But if Temple had some of the weakness of Epicurus, 
 he had also some of his strength. ' Goodness ' may be 
 compatible with selfishness, but it has some value in 
 itself. If he was overcareful in guarding his reputation 
 as a diplomat, he had gained that reputation by his 
 frankness and honesty. If he was overcautious in his 
 public position, he had gained that position because of 
 his character for sincerity. We might excuse him for 
 retiring from the muddy path of politics, if we remember 
 that he was forced into it against his will, and saw no 
 way of making it clean ; we must praise him for living 
 purely in an age of vice, for living honestly in an age of 
 corruption, and for winning general esteem by his in- 
 tegrity in an age where eminence and profligacy generally 
 went together. 
 
 ' I stand always upon the ground of never having 
 done an unjust or an ungentlemanly action in my life, 
 or an unfaithful one to the service of my master or my 
 country.' This was a proud boast to make in the 
 reign of Charles II., but it was not an unjustifiable 
 one. 
 
 The early Epicureans ' would have no part in the 
 faults of a Government, for the nature and passions of 
 men made them incapable of any that was perfect and 
 good ' ; and to keep himself unspotted from the political 
 
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE ^7 
 
 world was the not altogether unworthy aim of the 
 subject of our essay. 
 
 Their leader passed his life wholly in his garden ; 
 and under a sundial in his own favourite garden at Moor 
 Park was buried in 1699, by his own wish, the heart of 
 Sir William Temple, statesman, author, and Epicurean. 
 
 He had many failings ; he had more virtues ; and most 
 students of his life and works will be content to use as 
 his epitaph the description he himself wrote of his model 
 philosopher — * Whose admirable wit, felicity of expres- 
 sion, excellence of nature, sweetness of conversation, 
 temperance of life and constancy of death, made him so 
 beloved of his friends, admired by his scholars, and 
 honoured by the Athenians.' 
 
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