William Johnson Temple

William Johnson Temple (also Johnstone) (1739–1796) was an English cleric and essayist, now remembered mainly for his prolific correspondence with the biographer and diarist James Boswell. Temple was the grandfather of Frederick Temple and great-grandfather of William Temple, both Archbishops of Canterbury.

Early life William Johnson Temple was the son of William Temple of Allerdean, near Berwick-on-Tweed, where his father was mayor in 1750 and again in 1754. His mother was Sarah, daughter of Alexander Johnston of Newcastle upon Tyne, who died in 1747.

Temple was baptised at Berwick as "William Johnson" on 20 December 1739. He was a fellow-student at the University of Edinburgh with James Boswell, in the class of Robert Hunter, Professor of Greek. Their correspondence is in print from 29 July 1758, by which time Temple had left Edinburgh. On 22 May in that year, he was admitted pensioner at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and on 5 February 1759, he became a scholar on that foundation. Temple's name was taken off the books on 20 November 1761, and he went to London: he and Boswell met as again law students at the end of 1762. Temple took chambers in Farrar's Buildings, at the bottom of Inner Temple Lane, and in July 1763, he lent these rooms to Boswell.

Churchman During a visit to London in February 1766, Boswell introduced Temple to Samuel Johnson. On 14 September 1766, he was ordained deacon at Exeter, by Bishop Frederick Keppel, and on the following Sunday he was ordained priest by Keppel at a general ordination in the cathedral.The next day, on the presentation of Wilmot Vaughan, 4th Viscount Lisburne, whose family were connected with Berwick-on-Tweed, he was instituted to the rectory of Mamhead, adjoining Starcross, about ten miles from Exeter. He did not at all share Boswell's adulation of Johnson, and in literary terms was more an ally of Gray and Horace Walpole. A hostile anonymous biographical work, The Character of Doctor Johnson (1792), has been attributed to Temple, the attribution rating only as "possible" in one authority. It is accepted as Temple's work by Thomas Crawford.

He preached against bull-baiting. Anti-religious views and a Socinian tendency expressed privately to Boswell in the late 1760s later dropped away. In politics, he held radical reforming views. He held those views until late in life when they were shaken by the outcomes of the French Revolution.

Works Temple's writings were:

Boswell correspondence A character of Thomas Gray was written by Temple in a letter to Boswell a short time after the poet's death (30 July 1771), and was published by him without permission in the London Magazine for 1772. William Mason incorporated it in his Life of Gray, and Johnson included it in his memoir of Gray in Lives of the Poets.

Family Temple married Anne Stow, daughter of William Stow and Anne née Blake, sister of Sir Francis Blake. She died on 14 March 1793, aged 46; they had issue in all eleven children (DNB), or eight (ODNB). One son, Francis Temple (died 19 January 1863), became vice-admiral; another, Octavius Temple (died 13 August 1834), was governor of Sierra Leone, and father of Frederick Temple.