THE HAGUE, October 31st, 1670.

My Dearest Heart,—I received yours from Yarmouth, and was very glad you made so happy a passage. 'Tis a comfortable thing, when one is on this side, to know that such a thing can be done in spite of contrary winds. I have a letter from P., who says in character that you may take it from him that the Duke of Buckingham has begun a negotiation there, but what success in England he may have he knows not; that it were to be wished our politicians at home would consider well that there is no trust to be put in alliances with ambitious kings, especially such as make it their fundamental maxim to be base. These are bold words, but they are his own. Besides this, there is nothing but that the French King grows very thrifty, that all his buildings, except fortifications, are ceased, and that his payments are not so regular as they used to be. The people here are of another mind; they will not spare their money, but are resolved—at least the States of Holland—if the rest will consent, to raise fourteen regiments of foot and six of horse; that all the companies, both old and new, shall be of 120 men that used to be of 50, and every troop 80 that used to be of 45. Nothing is talked of but these new levies, and the young men are much pleased. Downton says they have strong suspicions here you will come back no more, and that they shall be left in the lurch; that something is striking up with France, and that you are sent away because you are too well inclined to these countries; and my cousin Temple, he says, told him that a nephew of Sir Robert Long's, who is lately come to Utrecht, told my cousin Temple, three weeks since, you were not to stay long here, because you were too great a friend to these people, and that he had it from Mr. Williamson, who knew very well what he said. My cousin Temple says he told it to Major Scott as soon as he heard it, and so 'tis like you knew it before; but there is such a want of something to say that I catch at everything. I am my best dear's most affectionate

D.T.

In the summer of 1671 there occurred an incident that reminds us considerably of the Dorothy Osborne of former days. The Triple Alliance had lost some of its freshness, and was not so much in vogue as heretofore. Charles II. had been coquetting with the French King, and at length the Government, throwing off its mask, formally displaced Temple from his post in Holland. "The critical position of affairs," says Courtenay, "induced the Dutch to keep a fleet at sea, and the English Government hoped to draw from that circumstance an occasion of quarrel. A yacht was sent for Lady Temple; the captain had orders to sail through the Dutch fleet if he should meet it, and to fire into the nearest ships until they should either strike sail to the flag which he bore, or return his shot so as to make a quarrel!

"He saw nothing of the Dutch Fleet in going over, but on his return he fell in with it, and fired, without warning and ceremony, into the ships that were next him.

"The Dutch admiral, Van Ghent, was puzzled; he seemed not to know, and probably did not know, what the English captain meant; he therefore sent a boat, thinking it possible that the yacht might be in distress; when the captain told his orders, mentioning also that he had the ambassadress on board. Van Ghent himself then came on board, with a handsome compliment to Lady Temple, and, making his personal inquiries of the captain, received the same answer as before. The Dutchman said he had no orders upon the point, which he rightly believed to be still unsettled, and could not believe that the fleet, commanded by an admiral, was to strike to the King's pleasure-boat.

"When the Admiral returned to his ship, the captain also, 'perplexed enough,' applied to Lady Temple, who soon saw that he desired to get out of his difficulty by her help; but the wife of Sir William Temple called forth the spirit of Dorothy Osborne. 'He knew,' she told the captain, 'his orders best, and what he was to do upon them, which she left to him to follow as he thought fit, without any regard to her or her children.' The Dutch and English commanders then proceeded each upon his own course, and Lady Temple was safely landed in England."

There is an account of this incident in a letter of Sir Charles Lyttelton to Viscount Hatton, in the Hatton Correspondence. He tells us that the poor captain, Captain Crow of The Monmouth, "found himself in the Tower about it;" but he does not add any further information as to the part which Dorothy played in the matter.

After their retirement to Sheen and Moor Park, Surrey, we know nothing distinctively of Lady Temple, and little is known of their family life. They had only two children living, having lost as many as seven in their infancy. In 1684 one of these children, their only daughter, died of small-pox; she was buried in Westminster Abbey. There is a letter of hers written to her father which shows some signs of her mother's affectionate teaching, and which we cannot forbear to quote. It is copied from Courtenay, vol. ii. p. 113.

SIR,—I deferred writing to you till I could tell you that I had received all my fine things, which I have just now done; but I thought never to have done giving you thanks for them. They have made me so very happy in my new clothes, and everybody that comes does admire them above all things, but yet not so much as I think they deserve; and now, if papa was near, I should think myself a perfect pope, though I hope I should not be burned as there was one at Nell Gwyn's door the 5th of November, who was set in a great chair, with a red nose half a yard long, with some hundreds of boys throwing squibs at it. Monsieur Gore and I agree mighty well, and he makes me believe I shall come to something at last; that is if he stays, which I don't doubt but he will, because all the fine ladies will petition for him. We are got rid of the workmen now, and our house is ready to entertain you. Come when you please, and you will meet nobody more glad to see you than your most obedient and dutiful daughter,

D. TEMPLE.

Temple's son, John Temple, married in 1685 a rich heiress in France, the daughter of Monsieur Duplessis Rambouillet, a French Protestant; he brought his wife to live at his father's house at Sheen. After King William and Queen Mary were actually placed on the throne, Sir William Temple, in 1689, permitted his son to accept the office of Secretary at War. For reasons now obscure and unknowable, he drowned himself in the Thames within a week of his acceptance of office, leaving this writing behind him:—

"My folly in undertaking what I was not able to perform has done the King and kingdom a great deal of prejudice. I wish him all happiness and abler servants than John Temple."

The following letter was written on that occasion by Lady Temple to her nephew, Sir John Osborne. The original of it is at Chicksands:—

To Sir John Osborne, thanking him for his consolation on the death of her son.

SHEEN, May 6th, 1689.

Dear Nephew,—I give you many thanks for your kind letter and the sense you have of my affliction, which truly is very great. But since it is laid upon me by the hand of an Almighty and Gracious God, that always proportions His punishments to the support He gives with them, I may hope to bear it as a Christian ought to do, and more especially one that is conscious to herself of having many ways deserved it. The strange revolution we have seen might well have taught me what this world is, yet it seems it was necessary that I should have a near example of the uncertainty of all human blessings, that so having no tie to the world I may the better prepare myself to leave it; and that this correction may suffice to teach me my duty must be the prayer of your affectionate aunt and humble servant,

D. TEMPLE.

During the remaining years of her life, Lady Temple was honoured, to use the conventional phrase, by the friendship of Queen Mary, and there is said to have been a continuous correspondence between them, though I can find on inquiry no trace of its existence at the present day.

Early in the year 1695, after forty years of married life, and in the sixty-seventh year of her age, she died. She lies, with her husband and children, on the north side of the nave of Westminster Abbey, close to the little door that leads to the organ gallery.

Her body sleeps in Capel's monument, And her immortal part with angels lives.

THE END