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Frederick Temple (30 November 1821 – 23 December 1902) was an English academic, teacher and Clergy, who served as Bishop of Exeter (1869–1885), Bishop of London (1885–1896) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1896–1902).
Temple's grandfather was William Johnson Temple, Rector of Mamhead in Devon, who is mentioned several times in James Boswell's Life of Johnson.
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, before he was seventeen.
The Tractarian Movement had begun five years earlier, but the memorable Tract 90 had not yet been written. In the intellectual and religious excitement, he drew closer to the camp of "the Oxford Liberal Movement." In 1842 he took a double first and was elected fellow of Balliol, and lecturer in mathematics and logic. Four years later he was ordained, and, with the aim of improving the education of the very poor, he accepted the headship of Kneller Hall, a college founded by the government for the training of masters of and penal schools. The experiment was not successful, and Temple himself advised its abandonment in 1855. He then accepted a school-inspectorship, which he held until he went to teach at Rugby School in 1858. In the meantime he had attracted the admiration of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and in 1856 he was appointed Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria. In 1857 he was select preacher at his university.
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.
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 Ancient Egypt, the ancient Greece, the Ancient Rome, 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.
In politics Temple was a follower of William Ewart Gladstone, and he approved of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. He also wrote and spoke in favour of the Elementary Education Act 1870 of William Edward Forster, and was an active member of the Endowed Schools Commission.
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.
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. There is a memorial to him at St Paul's Cathedral."Memorials of St Paul's Cathedral" Sinclair, W. p. 465: London; Chapman & Hall, Ltd; 1909.
Between 1871 and 1902 Temple was a governor of Sherborne School.
On 9 August 1902, he discharged the important duties of his office at the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and two days later was received in private audience by the King and Queen to be presented with the Royal Victorian Chain, a new decoration founded by the King in honour of his mother. In early October that year he visited St. David's Theological College in Lampeter, Wales, for its 75th anniversary. The strain at his advanced age told upon his health, however. During a speech which he delivered in the House of Lords on 4 December 1902 on the Education Bill of that year, he was taken ill, and, though he revived sufficiently to finish his speech, he never fully recovered, and died on 23 December 1902. He was interred in Canterbury Cathedral four days later, where his grave is located in the cloister garden. His second son, William Temple, became Archbishop of Canterbury thirty-nine years later and is buried close to him.
They had two sons:
A bust of Frederick Temple designed by George Frampton is located outside the Big School Room at Sherborne School, where he served as governor from 1871 to 1902. 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.
F. D. How included Temple in the 1904 book Six Great Schoolmasters.
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