TEMPLE, Richard (1675-1749)

The son and successor to a Tory baronet but himself a Whig and career soldier, Temple had lost his Buckingham seat in the Commons in 1713 and failed to regain it on petition on 3 Mar. 1714. Following the accession of George I he was created a peer as Baron Cobham, commemorating his descent through his maternal grandmother from William Brooke^†, 10th Lord Cobham (d.1597), though he was not that family’s heir. He did not have an opportunity to sit before the 1715 Parliament, so his career as a peer will be discussed fully in the next phase of this work.