The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54

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The Love Letters of Dorothy
Osborne to Sir William Temple,
1652-54

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to
Sir
William Temple, 1652-54, Edited by Edward Abbott Parry
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Title: The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple,
1652-54
Editor: Edward Abbott Parry
Release Date: June 7, 2004 [eBook #12544]
Language: English
Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVE

LETTERS OF DOROTHY OSBORNE TO SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE,
1652-54***
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Cera Kruger, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE LOVE LETTERS OF DOROTHY OSBORNE TO SIR
WILLIAM TEMPLE, 1652-54
Edited by Edward Abbott Parry
New York, 1901

TO MY DAUGHTER HELEN THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
EXEMPLI GRATIA

Editorial Note
It having been noted in the Athenaeum, June 9, 1888, that rumours
were afloat doubting the authenticity of these letters, and that these
rumours would sink to rest if the history of the originals were published,
I hasten to adopt my reviewer's suggestion, and give an outline of their
story. They are at present in the hands of the Rev. Robert Longe at
Coddenham Vicarage, Suffolk, where they have been for the last
hundred years. At Sir William Temple's death in 1698, he left no other
descendants than two grand-daughters--Elizabeth and Dorothy.
Elizabeth died without issue in 1772; Dorothy married Nicholas Bacon,
Esq. of Shrubland Hall in the parish of Coddenham. Dorothy left a son,
the Rev. Nicholas Bacon, who was vicar of Coddenham. This traces the
letters to Coddenham Vicarage. The Rev. Nicholas Bacon dying
without issue, bequeathed Coddenham Vicarage, with the pictures and
papers therein, to the Rev. John Longe, who had married his wife's
sister. The Rev. John Longe, who died in 1835, was the father of the
present owner. This satisfactorily accounts for the letters being in their

present hands, and these stated facts will, I trust, set at rest the fears or
hopes of sceptics.
EDWARD ABBOTT PARRY.
MANCHESTER, October 1888.

Contents
I. INTRODUCTION
II. EARLY LETTERS. Winter and Spring 1652-53
III. LIFE AT CHICKSANDS. 1653
IV. DESPONDENCY. Christmas 1653
V. THE LAST OF CHICKSANDS. February and March 1654
VI. VISITING. Summer 1654
VII. THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME
APPENDIX--LADY TEMPLE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
"An editor," says Dr. Johnson, is "he that revises or prepares any work
for publication;" and this definition of an editor's duty seems wholly
right and satisfactory. But now that the revision of these letters is
apparently complete, the reader has some right to expect a formal
introduction to a lady whose name he has, in all probability, never
heard; and one may not be overstepping the modest and Johnsonian
limits of an editor's office, when the writing of a short introduction is
included among the duties of preparation.

Dorothy Osborne was the wife of the famous Sir William Temple, and
apology for her biography will be found in her own letters, here for the
first time published. Some of them have indeed been printed in a Life of
Sir William Temple by the Right Honourable Thomas Peregrine
Courtenay, a man better known to the Tory politician of fifty years ago
than to any world of letters in that day or this. Forty-two extracts from
these letters did Courtenay transfer to an Appendix, without
arrangement or any form of editing, as he candidly confesses; but not
without misgivings as to how they would be received by a people
thirsting to read the details of the negotiations which took place in
connection with the Triple Alliance. If Courtenay lived to learn that the
world had other things to do than pore over dull excerpts from inhuman
State papers, we may pity his awakening; but we can never quite
forgive the apologetic paragraph with which he relegates Dorothy
Osborne's letters to the mouldy obscurity of an Appendix.
When Macaulay was reviewing Courtenay's book in the Edinburgh
Review, he took occasion to write a short but living sketch of the early
history of Sir William Temple and Dorothy Osborne. And with this
account so admirably written, ready at hand, it becomes the clear duty
of the Editor to quote rather than to rewrite; which he does with the
greater pleasure, remembering that it was this very passage that first led
him to read the letters of Dorothy Osborne.
"William Temple, Sir John's eldest son, was born in London in the year
1628. He received his early education under his maternal