At last, however, he had escaped from public life, and found himself at liberty to follow his favourite pursuits.  His fortune was easy.  He had about fifteen hundred a year, besides the Mastership of the Rolls in Ireland, an office in which he had succeeded his father, and which was then a mere sinecure for life, requiring no residence.  His reputation both as a negotiator and a writer stood high.  He resolved to be safe, to enjoy himself, and to let the world take its course; and he kept his resolution.

Darker times followed.  The Oxford Parliament was dissolved.  The Tories were triumphant.  A terrible vengeance was inflicted on the chiefs of the Opposition.  Temple learned in his retreat the disastrous fate of several of his old colleagues in council.  Shaftesbury fled to Holland.  Russell died on the scaffold.  Essex added a yet sadder and more fearful story to the bloody chronicles of the Tower.  Monmouth clung in agonies of supplication round the knees of the stern uncle whom he had wronged, and tasted a bitterness worse than that of death, the bitterness of knowing that he had humbled himself in vain.  A tyrant trampled on the liberties and religion of the realm.  The national spirit swelled high under the oppression.  Disaffection spread even to the strongholds of loyalty, to the Cloisters of Westminster, to the schools of Oxford, to the guard-room of the household troops, to the very hearth and bed-chamber of the Sovereign.  But the troubles which agitated the whole country did not reach the quiet orangery in which Temple loitered away several years without once seeing the smoke of London.  He now and then appeared in the circle at Richmond or Windsor.  But the only expressions which he is recorded to have used during these perilous times were, that he would be a good subject, but that he had done with politics.

The Revolution came:  he remained strictly neutral during the short struggle; and he then transferred to the new settlement the same languid sort of loyalty which he had felt for his former masters.  He paid court to William at Windsor, and William dined with him at Sheen.  But, in spite of the most pressing solicitations, Temple refused to become Secretary of State.  The refusal evidently proceeded only from his dislike of trouble and danger; and not, as some of his admirers would have us believe, from any scruple of conscience or honour.  For he consented that his son should take the office of Secretary at War under the new Sovereign.  This unfortunate young man destroyed himself within a week after his appointment from vexation at finding that his advice had led the King into some improper steps with regard to Ireland.  He seems to have inherited his father’s extreme sensibility to failure, without that singular prudence which kept his father out of all situations in which any serious failure was to be apprehended.  The blow fell heavily on the family.  They retired in deep dejection to Moor Park, [Mr. Courtenay (vol.