Frederick Temple

Frederick Temple (30 November 1821 – 23 December 1902)[2] was an English academic, teacher and churchman, who served as Bishop of Exeter (1869–1885), Bishop of London (1885–1896) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1896–1902).

Early life

Temple was born in

Temple was sent to Blundell's School, Tiverton, and soon showed signs of being suited to a different career. He retained a warm affection for the school, where he did well both academically and at physical activities, especially walking. The family was not wealthy, and Temple knew he would have to earn his own living. He took the first step by winning a Blundell scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford,^[5] before he was seventeen.^[3]

The

Temple strengthened the school's academic reputation in the classics, but also instituted scholarships in natural science, built a laboratory, and recognised the importance of these subjects. He reformed the sporting activities, in spite of all the traditions of the playing fields. His own tremendous powers of work and rough manner intimidated the pupils, but he soon became popular, and raised the school's reputation. His school sermons made a deep impression on the boys, teaching loyalty, faith and duty.[3]

It was two years after he had taken up his work at Rugby that the volume entitled Essays and Reviews caused a controversy. The first essay in the book, "The Education of the World," was by Temple. The authors of the volume were responsible only for their respective articles, but some of these were deemed so destructive that many people banned the whole book, and a noisy demand, led by Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, called on the headmaster of Rugby to dissociate himself from his comrades. Temple's essay had dealt with the intellectual and spiritual growth of the race, and had pointed out the contributions made respectively by the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and others. Though accepted as harmless, it was blamed for being in the book. Temple refused to repudiate his associates, and it was only at a much later date (1870) that he decided to withdraw his essay. In the meantime, he printed a volume of his Rugby sermons, to show definitely what his own religious position was.^[3]

In politics Temple was a follower of

In 1869, Gladstone offered him the deanery of Durham, but he declined because he wanted to stay at Rugby School. When later in the same year, however, Henry Phillpotts, bishop of Exeter, died, the prime minister turned again to Temple, and he accepted the bishopric of the city he knew so well.^[3]

Bishoprics

The appointment caused a fresh controversy;

Temple's tenancy of the bishopric of London saw him working harder than ever. His normal working day at this time was one of fourteen or fifteen hours, though under the strain blindness was rapidly coming on. Many of his clergy and candidates for ordination thought him a rather terrifying person, enforcing almost impossible standards of diligence, accuracy and preaching efficiency, but his manifest devotion to his work and his zeal for the good of the people won him general confidence. In London he continued as a tireless temperance worker, and the working class instinctively recognised him as their friend. When, in view of his growing blindness, he offered to resign the bishopric, he was urged to reconsider his proposal, and on the sudden death of Edward White Benson in 1896, though now seventy-six years of age, he accepted the see of Canterbury.^[7] There is a memorial to him at St Paul's Cathedral.^[8]

Between 1871 and 1902 Temple was a governor of Sherborne School.^[9]

Archbishop of Canterbury

As archbishop he presided in 1897 over the decennial

His first charge as primate on "Disputes in the Church" was felt to be a most powerful plea for a more catholic and a more charitable temper, and again and again during the closing years of his life he came back to this same theme. He was zealous also in the cause of foreign missions, and in a sermon preached at the opening of the new century he urged that a supreme obligation rested upon Britain at this epoch in the world's history to seek to evangelise all nations. In 1900 he presided over the World Temperance Congress in London, and on one occasion preached in the interests of women's education.^[11]

On 9 August 1902, he discharged the important duties of his office at the

Temple married in 1876 Beatrice Blanche Lascelles (1844–1915), youngest daughter of Right Hon. William Lascelles (1798–1851), a Whig politician and son of the 2nd Earl of Harewood. Her mother was Lady Caroline Georgiana Howard (1803–1881), daughter of another Whig politician George Howard, 6th Earl of Carlisle. Beatrice Lascelles had nine elder siblings, including Lady Chesham, Lady Edward Cavendish, and the diplomat Sir Frank Lascelles.

They had two sons:

• Frederick Charles Temple (b.1879)
• William Temple (1881–1944)

Memorials

The Temple Reading Room and Museum at Rugby School is named after him, and contains an 1869 bust of him by Thomas Woolner. There is a fine memorial in Canterbury Cathedral at the east end in the Corona depicting Temple kneeling in prayer. The West Window of Exeter Cathedral also depicts him amongst the great figures of the cathedral's history shown there.

A bust of Frederick Temple designed by Sir George Frampton is located outside the Big School Room at Sherborne School, where he served as governor from 1871 to 1902.^[9] The bust is inside a marble niche designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield which displays his coat of arms impaled with those of Exeter and Canterbury on the left and right respectively.^[17]

F. D. How included Temple in the 1904 book Six Great Schoolmasters.^[18]

Honours

• 1842 Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
• 1885 Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.
• 1897 Elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.^[19]
• 1902 Awarded the Royal Victorian Chain by King Edward VII.

Notes

References

• ISBN 978-0-8006-3153-6
  .
• Jones, John (11 August 2014). "Balliol Archives". balliol.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
• Naylor, Robert; Naylor, John (1916). From John O' Groats to Land's End. London: Caxton.
• Smith, Francis, St Mary the Virgin Church, Washfield (church guide booklet ed.), p. 5^{[full citation needed]}
• Temple, Frederick (1903), "Lecture IV: The Relations Between Religion and Science", Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884

Attribution

• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Temple, Frederick" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 601–602. Endnotes:
  • Sandford, E.G., ed. (1906). Memoirs of Archbishop Temple by "Seven Friends".
  • Sandford, E.G. (1907). Frederick Temple: An Appreciation., with biographical introduction by
    William Temple

Further reading

• Hinchliff, Peter (1998). Frederick Temple Archbishop of Canterbury. A Life.
• Stephens, Henry Morse (1912). "Temple, Frederick" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Spooner, H. M.; Chapman, Mark D. "Temple, Frederick (1821–1902)".
  doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36451. (Subscription or UK public library membership
  required.)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frederick Temple.

• Works by Frederick Temple at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Frederick Temple at Internet Archive
• Frederick Temple at Find a Grave
• Archbishop Temple's papers are held at Lambeth Palace Library

Church of England titles
Preceded by Henry Phillpotts	Bishop of Exeter 1869–1885	Succeeded by Edward Henry Bickersteth
Preceded by John Jackson	Bishop of London 1885–1896	Succeeded by Mandell Creighton
Preceded by Edward White Benson	Archbishop of Canterbury 1896–1902	Succeeded by Randall Davidson