James Temple

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James Temple (1606 - 1680) was a puritan, civil war soldier and regicide^[1]. Following the death of his elder brother in 1627, he became the only surviving son of Sir Alexander Temple. He rose to become a colonel in the Parliamentary army in the Civil War and served as a judge at the trial of Charles I. After the restoration he was convicted of regicide and imprisoned on Jersey, where he died.

[edit] Early life

Longhouse Place (now known as Chadwell Place), the childhood home of James Temple

Temple was born to Sir Alexander Temple and Mary Sommer while his parents were living in Rochester, Kent in the house previously owned by his mother's first husband. He had an older brother (John) and a sister (Susan). As a result of his mother's first marriage, he had 2 step brothers (including Sir Thomas Peniston) and 2 step sisters. He was born into a well connected gentry family. His uncles included Sir Thomas Temple, 1st Baronet, of Stowe and William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele. His sister, Susan Temple, was the mother of Martin Lister and the grandmother of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough.

In 1607, following his mother's death, he moved to Longhouse Place (now known as Chadwell Place) in Chadwell St Mary, Essex. Both he and his older brother John, were admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1622. While Temple was living in Chadwell St Mary, a number of Temple family portraits were painted by Cornelius Johnson. These may have been part of a family commission^[2]. They include Temple's father and sister, and may have included Temple himself, but no portrait is known to have survived.

In the early 1620s, as a result of his father's marriage to Mary Bankworth (who was previously married to John Busbridge), he moved again, this time to Haremere Hall in Etchingham, Sussex. His father's third marriage gave him more step siblings, including his stepsister, Mary Busbridge to whom Temple was married in March 1627. Over the next few years, they had five children.

Following this marriage, Temple's father invested in a farming venture by Edward Whalley who was the brother-in-law of Temple's stepsister - Mary Penistone. Sir Alexander apparently intended this to provide an inheritance for his grandchildren (the children of James Temple). As a younger son himself, Sir Alexander wanted to ensure suitable provision for his own younger son, James. This arrangement led to the court case between the two regicides in the 1650s by which time, Edward Whalley was a prominent and successful member of the Puritan establishment. ^[3]

Shortly after his marriage, Temple participated in the Duke of Buckingham's ill-fated expedition to the Isle of Rhé^[1], during which his brother was killed. In the 1630s, he was associated with the Puritan gentry of Sussex ^[4] and in due course became a Sussex Justice of the Peace (JP).

[edit] Civil War

The Water Gate of Tilbury fort. Temple was captain of the earlier, "blockhouse" fort.

Temple's military experience became useful when the First English Civil War broke out in August, 1642. He initially served in the Midlands as captain of a troop of horse raised by his uncle Lord Saye and Sele and commanded by his cousin John Fiennes. Temple was related to Oliver Cromwell via his kinsman Edward Whalley and was able to secure a commission for Whalley in his uncle's unit. They both fought at the battle of Edgehill in October 1642. In March 1643, Temple had returned to Sussex, and along with his step-brother, John Busbridge, he was appointed by parliament to the Sussex committee set up to seize and administer the assets of prominent Royalists^[5]. In December 1643, Temple played a major part in the defence of the crossing of the River Adur at Bramber Castle against a Royalist attack during Lord Hopton's advance into Sussex.^[6] His actions were described by Dr Cheynell:

"Upon the 12th of December I visited a brave soldier of my acquaintance, Captain James Temple, who did that day defend the fort of Bramber against a bold and daring enemy to the wonder of all the country ; and I did not marvel at it, for he is a man that hath his head full of stratagems, his heart full of piety and valour, and his hand as full of success as it is of dexterity."^[7]

Temple was subsequently promoted to colonel and was appointed governor of Tilbury Fort in Essex, a post that had previously been held by his father. The fort was close to Temple's childhood home at Longhouse Place and was of vital strategic importance because it controlled the approach to London by river. During the Second Civil War, he secured Tilbury Fort, against the Royalist uprisings in Kent and Essex. Controlling the fort enabled Lord Fairfax to take Parliamentry troops to Colchester for the siege of royalists in that town.

[edit] Trial of Charles I

A plate depicting the Trial of Charles I on January 4, 1649, from John Nalson's "Record of the Trial of Charles I, 1688" in the British Museum.

Temple was elected recruiter Member of Parliament (MP) for Bramber in September 1645, and emerged as a strong supporter of the group known as Independents. As a result he was one of the MPs allowed to remain after Pride's Purge. In January 1649, Temple was appointed to the High Court of Justice that brought Charles I to trial. He attended nine sessions of the court^[1] in both the Painted Chamber and Westminster hall and was the 28th of the 59 signatories of the King's death warrant.^[8]

With the establishment of the Commonwealth, he served on various parliamentary committees, but came under suspicion of corruption, which led to his dismissal from the governorship of Tilbury in September 1650. It was probably around this time that he married his second wife, Joanna van Tromp.

Temple attracted a number of accusations of financial impropriety, although apparently nothing was proved. In 1648, one Elizabeth Willan had attempted to serve him with two writs in connection with a bond for £400. He "threw them on the ground and spurned them with his foot". ^[9] A few years later, he was accused of feathering his own nest from the estate of a prominent Sussex catholic - Sir John Shelley

[edit] Restoration

Elizabeth Castle, Jersey, where Temple died in 1680

Temple returned to parliament with the recall of the Rump and Long Parliaments by General Monck, but following the Restoration in 1660, he was excluded from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, because of his role in the trial and execution of Charles I. He attempted to escape to Ireland, traveling under his first wife's maiden name of Busbridge, but was arrested in Warwickshire and was held in the Tower of London before being brought to trial as a regicide. He claimed that he had sat on the High Court of Justice in order to pass information to the King's friends and that he had begged Oliver Cromwell not to execute the King. However, he was sentenced to life imprisonment initially in Mont Orgueil, and subsequently in Elizabeth Castle (both on Jersey) where he is reported to have died on 17 February 1680 ^[10].

[edit] References

This article contains text under a Creative Commons License by David Plant. "The British Civil Wars and Commonwealth website". http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/temple-james.htm. 

1. ^ ^{a b c} Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2. ^ Karen Hearn, Dynasties (Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1995)
3. ^ John Matthews, Farming in Chadwell in the 17th Century (in Panorama - the Journal of the Thurrock Local History Society, Number 46, page 57). A slightly modified and corrected version of this note is available at http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=A_Chancery_Case_between_James_Temple_and_Edward_Whalley
4. ^ Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex, 1600-1660
5. ^ http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=55791
6. ^ Henry Cheal: The Story of Chorham, 1921
7. ^ SUSSEX IN THE GREAT CIVIL WAR AND THE INTERREGNUM 1642-1660 (text available at http://www.archive.org/stream/sussexingreatciv00thomiala/sussexingreatciv00thomiala_djvu.txt)
8. ^ House of Lords Record Office, The Death Warrant of King Charles I
9. ^ Appendix to the 7th Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
10. ^ Balleine's History Of Jersey, page 148