Bentinck was expressly sent to him to ask hie advice as to the expediency of refusing the Royal Assent to the Bill for Triennial Parliaments. Sir W. Temple advised him to pass the Bill; and he employed Swift, who was then his private secretary, to carry his reasons to the Earl of Portland; they did not, however, prevail.
Early in the year 1695, Sir W. Temple lost his wife, an excellent and very superior woman; his sister. Lady Giffard, lived with him till his death, which took place in the year 1699; he was buried, according to his own directions, with as small expense as was convenient, in Westminster Hall, near two of his children, who had died young, and his heart, according to his own express desire, was interred "six feet underground on the south-east side of the stone dial in the little garden at Moor Park."[1]
- ↑ "Of Temple's character," says Mr. Macauley, "little more remains to be said. Burnet accuses him of holding irreligious opinions, and corrupting every body who came near him. But the vague assertion of so rash and partial a writer as Burnet, about a man with whom, as far as we know, he never exchanged a word, is of little weight. It is, indeed, by no means improbable that Temple may have been a free thinker. The Osbornes thought him so when he was a very young man. And it is certain that a large proportion of the gentlemen of rank and fashion who made their entrance into
