Read My Heart

by Jane Dunn

  Working alongside Broghill and Coote, William was most exercised by the suggestion that a poll tax, already ‘to the heigth of what the nation could bear’, should be doubled. According to his sister, William was not the only member of the convention who thought this wrong but he was the only one to oppose it publicly. The main supporters of the bill tried to persuade him privately to change his position but ‘His answer was, that he had nothing to say to it out of the House’.11 William’s principled independence meant that they waited until he was away and then passed the bill in his absence. This underhand deed, according to Martha, caused so much general debate that her previously reclusive brother was for a while the talk of the town, with more attention and employment directed his way as a result.

  In the new Irish parliament, officially opened in May 1661, William, his brother John and their father were returned as members for Carlow. Largely Anglo-Irish, exclusively Protestant, it was charged with sorting out the land disputes. After the restoration, Dorothy’s favourite preacher, Jeremy Taylor, had been appointed Bishop of Down and Connor. He was called upon to open the parliament in Chichester House, Dublin, with a pointed sermon entitled ‘Rebellion – the son of witchcraft’, a quote taken from I Samuel 15, verse 23. This was an idea he had elaborated on in his famous devotional work, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, published first in 1650 in the heat of the revolution that abolished bishops and the prayer book and threatened the very existence of the traditional Church of England. He was careful to stress how essential the act of obedience was to one’s own relationship with God. He agreed that parents and kings and spiritual guides owed a duty of care to their children, their subjects and congregations but even if they were negligent, or just plain wrong, those governed by them had to accept that all authority descended from God. Rebellion and revolution was consequently ungodly, he maintained, whatever the provocation.

  William became an active member of this parliament, eloquent and passionate in debate and always independent in his views. Martha remembered: ‘he gain’d soe much credit, & turn’d the House so often in their warmest debates by never entering into any of their factions or partys, nor minding who he pleas’d or anger’d.’12 His interest in farming meant he was an influential member, along with the scientist and economist Sir William Petty, of the committee appointed for the promotion of trade in Ireland. Free export of Irish wool was one of the main proposals and in the summer of 1661 William was one of the commissioners who went to England to wait on Charles II, petitioning him on behalf of Irish concerns and to pass the amended Act of Settlement.

  This was the first time William Temple met the king. When he was just twenty he had seen Charles I and not been impressed. Now his son stood before him, taller and more physically majestic than his father, with his glossy dark hair, strong eyebrows and curling moustache dramatising a wide sardonic mouth. At thirty-one Charles II was in his prime, but the years of disappointment and self-indulgence had taken their toll. He was sallow-skinned and his face much leaner than when he was a dashing young prince in exile, his fine aquiline nose appeared longer and the lines from nose to mouth were already deeply etched, making his face in repose more sombre. Intelligent, quick-witted and charming, Charles had an easy manner that belied a deep melancholy and self-protective wariness towards the world. The tidal wave of popular affection and support that greeted his return did not find an answering ecstasy of spirit in him. He knew the fickleness of crowd emotion and understood he would never be so popular again. His embrace of the libertine court that gathered around him, with its gambling, drinking and whoring, was more an attempt at escape from a personal world-weariness than an expression of exuberant appetite and reckless contempt for constraint. His humour and generosity of spirit gave him a lovable, charismatic presence but his cynicism and lack of honesty in his dealings at home and abroad complicated the problems he faced and made him a tragic failure as king.

  There is no record of what happened in that first meeting or what they thought of each other. Aged thirty-three, William was only two years older than the king and yet a world of experience, expectation and temperament separated them. However, they shared a similar extravagance of appearance. William’s hair was equally luxuriant, dark and wavy, but his was real. He too sported a dark moustache but the mouth it delineated was more sensual than sardonic. William’s good looks were remarkable even in his time and where Charles II had the glamour of majesty, William had the mien of an honest and philosophical man with modest ambitions, to whom love and life had already brought much real pleasure.

  It was likely that William stayed in England until the king had agreed the Irish Act of Settlement, something he did not do until September 1662. In this time he began to make the acquaintance of the powerful men of government. He paid his respects to the newly elevated Duke of Ormonde, and was dismayed to be received coldly, possibly because his father had not always been in agreement with ‘the Great Duke’ as Ormonde came to be known, when he was lord lieutenant of Ireland. Any coldness soon melted, however, particularly when they worked together for a while in Ireland, and they became firm friends and colleagues. Ormonde recognised William’s honesty and lack of self-interest and subsequently ‘complain’d to him, that he was the onely man in Ireland, that had never asked him [for] any thing’.13 William renewed his friendship with Lord Leicester at Penshurst, the paradise of his youth, and carried a letter of introduction from him to the Earl of Clarendon. Having been an adviser to the king during his exile and begun his famous History of the Great Rebellion, Clarendon was already in his fifties when he was created an earl and lord chancellor. For a short while he was the most influential man in government.

  William’s favourable reception by some of the powerful men in the new regime must have given him reason to think there was a chance of some kind of diplomatic employment, for he returned to Ireland in 1662 ‘with the resolutions of quitting that Kingdome, and bringing his Famely into England’.14 While he had been away his brother John had been elected as speaker in the Irish House of Commons when it had assembled again the previous December. More dramatically, his beloved little sister Martha had married in the spring, on 21 April 1662. Her husband was a young man, Sir Thomas Giffard, whose family owned estates around Castle Jordan in the county of Meath. In a shocking illustration of the fragility of life then and the way death could arrive unannounced and claim even the young and healthy, Thomas Giffard had enjoyed barely a week of married life before being overtaken by a catastrophic illness and dying within a fortnight. Martha was twenty-three. Sir Thomas Giffard could not have been much older: his funeral oration could find nothing to say of his achievements but only of his ‘sweete carriage’ and ‘innocent conversation’,15 and the fact he blushed like a child.

  From this time of cruel widowhood Martha, now Lady Giffard, made her home permanently with Dorothy and William in what seemed to be a satisfactory and happy arrangement for all concerned. Martha was a decade younger than her brother and sister-in-law and from her portraits appears dark and pretty and very like William. Remarkably for the time, she never remarried although there would have been many potential suitors and every conventional expectation she should do so. Perhaps she too, like their father, felt it proper to show her marital devotion by never replacing her spouse with another: she described her husband’s death as ‘my losse that time will never wear out’.16 Just as likely, it was her clear attachment to her brother, and later to Dorothy and their children too, that made her reluctant to leave their company for an alliance with another.

  Even before she met her, Dorothy set out to treat William’s fifteen-year-old sister like an equal and a friend. She had a particular sympathy with young women and was extremely fond and supportive of her young niece Dorothy Peyton. In her letters written during William’s courtship Dorothy was always careful to extend her affection to his younger sister who was already very close to his heart. There were frequent and complimentary comments about the girl she had yet to meet, pavi
ng the way for the harmonious intimacy that would last all their lives. In one letter Dorothy wrote: ‘What would I give to know that Sister of yours that is soe good at discovery. Sure she is Excelent Company.’17 In the midst of her painful battles with her brother, Dorothy wrote to William, commiserating with Martha over their imminent sea passage to Ireland and, in her uniquely charming manner, declaring that much as she hated the sea she would happily undertake an even longer journey in order to make her acquaintance. She was humorous too about her lack of amity with her own brother and hoped that Martha, the most devoted of sisters, would not think any the less of her for that:

  In Earnest I have pittyed your Sister Extreamly and can Easily aprehende how troublesome this Voyage must needs bee to her, by knowing what Others have bin to mee; Yet pray assure her I would not scruple at undertakeing it my self to gaine such an acquaintance, and would goe much farther then where (I hope) she is now, to serve her. I’m affrayde she will not think mee a fitt Person to choose for a friend that cannot agree with my owne Brother; but I must trust you to tell my storry for mee, and I will hope for a better Character from you, then hee gives mee.18

  Martha’s own letters showed an insightful, affectionate woman with a wide range of family and friends whom she relied on to lift her spirits and make sense of a life that did not include a family of her own. Just a couple of years or so into her widowhood she explained the joys of friendship: ‘I always owne it, Friendship is ye thing in ye Worlde I have ye greatest esteeme for … I must confesse to have bin once soe happy in my kindnesse to some persons as to have found charms in their conversation greate enough at all times as to disperse all ye clouds my own fancy soe perpetually furnished me with.’19 It seemed that in their long shared life together, Dorothy and Martha did not resent each other’s place in the household or in William’s heart. Martha was the extrovert to Dorothy’s introvert, and was very much in awe of her sister-in-law’s intellect, character and talents. It was she who suggested – a thoroughly unconventional idea at the time – that Dorothy’s letters were so brilliant and extraordinary that they were worthy of the world’s notice and should be published.

  Dorothy’s few remaining letters to William after her marriage show her skills and humour in no way diminished even though intimacy and proximity had made such long and entertaining discourses unnecessary. However, during their absences, she still longed for letters from him, while he continued to complain that hers were too short: how he missed the epic compositions of their courtship: ‘Tis mighty well too that I have satt upon thornes these two howers for this sweet scrip full of reproaches,’ she wrote in mock indignation. ‘Pray what did you Expect I should have writt, tell mee that I may know how to please you next time. But now I remember mee you would have such letters as I used to write before we were marryed, there are a great many such in your cabinet that I can send you if you please but none in my head I can assure you.’ She went on to tease him with the recollection of her brother Henry’s dreadful prophecy that she loved William more than he would ever love her and that ‘if I ever came to bee your wife you would reproach mee with it’.20

  In another undated letter, she finished a note full of practicalities with this intimate little vignette of family life, bestowing his kiss on their son and keeping one for William from the boy, together with many of hers for his return: ‘I gave Jack [their son John] the kiss you sent him and he mems [remembers] his little duty and gave mee another for you that you shall have as soone as you come home and twenty more from Your D.T.’ This little boy was described in another letter, where Dorothy, referring to William as ‘my Hearte’, wrote that she already loved John too much, despite her efforts to rationalise her feelings: ‘poor childe hee looks soe honestly I know hee never will [be rude], deed my Hearte ’tis the quietest best little boy that Ever was borne, I’me afray’d hee’l make mee grow fonde of him doe what I can’.21 She added that William’s absence meant her only entertainment was their son’s company and her own fond thoughts of her husband and longing for his return. On another occasion, she likened herself to one of her great hunting dogs pining for his affection: ‘Can you tell me when you intende to come home, would you would, I should take it mighty kindly good deare make haste I am as weary as a dog without his Master … I infinitly love my dearest dear hart and I am his D. Temple.’22

  The Temple family that returned to England probably in the summer of 1663 consisted of William and Dorothy and their only surviving child John, who was by then seven years old, accompanied by Martha, Lady Giffard. They may have returned for a while to the Hammond family at Reading and then travelled on to London. Two of the undated letters written by Dorothy after her marriage suggest they might have been written in Reading in February, perhaps 1664. In one she mentioned John had been invited by Lady Vachell to her magnificent Elizabeth mansion Coley to go ‘a-shroveing’. Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent: at this time much of the perishable food not allowed during the abstinence of Lent was eaten up or given away. In fact February and early March was a very lean time for the poor, and particularly hard on agricultural workers. Rich households like Lady Vachell’s would have enjoyed some feasting themselves, often on pancakes – although it was another couple of centuries before Shrove Tuesday became known as pancake day – and given food away to the needy in the community. This was known as ‘shroving’ or ‘gooding’.

  At much the same time Dorothy, in watching the demolition of a great wall, probably of Reading Abbey, was touched by its final fall, having withstood so much battering for so long. Her elegiac tone reinforced the symbolism of the destruction of the wall as a reflection on reversals of power and the inexorable cycle of triumph and decay. Perhaps she was thinking of the Cromwellian revolution or, more personally, of the stalwart stand at Castle Cornet of her honourable, obstinate old father: ‘[we] were all well heer and were at the fall of the great wall today. I would have cryed over it mee thoughts, it fell soe solemnly and with soe good grace after it had stood out all their Battery’s soe long and mett with the same fate that all the great thing’s in the worlde doe when they fall, The People shouted at it and were pleased, ran in to trample ont because twas down and tooke a pride in treading where they durst not have sett a foot whilest it was up.’23

  They were certainly in London in the summer of 1664 when Martha was being begged by the Duke of Ormonde’s daughter Elizabeth, whom she had met in Ireland and who had subsequently married the Earl of Chesterfield, to come and visit her at the family estate in the Peak District in distant Derbyshire. Elizabeth was lonely and miserable, having been banished from London society by a jealous husband, for no fault other than that her beauty attracted the attention of the king’s lascivious brother, the Duke of York. This had all caused such merriment in an already dissolute and bawdy court that, according to Samuel Pepys, the phrase ‘to send your wife to the Devil’s Arse at the Peak [a famous cave]’ became for a while a facetious suggestion for anyone with a troublesome wife. Sadly, aged twenty-five Lady Chesterfield died the following year of some unnamed disease, and without having been allowed back to the city and society she loved.

  Martha had refused her friend’s insistent invitations because her sister-in-law was pregnant again and she felt her place was by her side. Dorothy’s seventh child, another baby boy, was born in the summer of 1664 but did not survive. After seven pregnancies and births, their firstborn John continued to be the Temples’ only living child. William had a relatively modest income of about £500 a year and was in need of employment. This meant he had to hang around court, hoping for preferment, wasting time in a society characterised by aimlessness, levity and excess. Pepys blamed the sexual incontinence and wild gossip of court life on this very lack of purpose: ‘it is the effect of idlenesse and having nothing else to imploy their great spirits upon’.24 William did not much enjoy London life and certainly never felt at home as a courtier. Temperamentally he was passionate and spontaneous, unable to provide the sil
ken flattery and chameleon opinions that smoothed the ascent of most powerful men. When old, he pondered what it was that he disliked about court life.

  ‘A Court, [is] properly a fair, the end of it trade and gain: for none would come to be justled in a crowd, that is easy at home, nor go to service, that thinks he has enough to live well of himself … All the skill of a Court is to follow the prince’s present humour, talk the present language, serve the present turn, and make use of the present interest of one’s friends.’25 His sister recognised that his instinctive and emotional reactions to people and situations meant his warmth flowed out to everyone he met. William always thought the best of others and could be accused of naivety but there were those few whom he disliked heartily and whose company he could not bear, and nothing could persuade him to pretend it was otherwise.

  William had left his two brothers behind in Ireland and missed their company greatly, ‘ye want of whose conversation he always regretted’.26 He had to try to make new connections in a fast-changing web of social and political opportunists, all ambitious and self-seeking men. His recent rapprochment with the Duke of Ormonde had meant he had come from Ireland armed with letters of commendation to both the Earl of Clarendon, who was lord chancellor, and also to Lord Arlington,* secretary of state and climbing fast. William, warm-hearted and impetuous and lacking a cynical view of human nature, was particularly attracted to Arlington, and would subsequently be undermined and betrayed by him. Their friendship, however, started on a high note with Arlington likening himself to Maecenas, the Roman politician and patron of the arts, and William to Horace, the great Roman lyric poet to whom he offered generous patronage. Arlington quoted Maecenas in telling William, ‘he found something in their genius, that agreed’.27 This flattered them both and promised much. Both he and Clarendon rated William highly and their opinions were transmitted to the king.