Sir William Temple (1628-1699)

[KALKI]

Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet (25 April 1628 – 27 January 1699) was an English statesman and essayist.


William Temple was the son of Sir John Temple of Dublin and nephew of Rev. Dr. Thomas Temple DD.[citation needed] Born in London, and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Temple travelled across Europe, and was for some time a member of the Irish Parliament, employed on various diplomatic missions. During his time as a diplomat, Temple successfully negotiated the marriage of the Prince of Orange and Princess Mary of England, and the Triple Alliance of 1668. On his return he was much consulted by Charles II, but disapproving of the anti-Dutch courses adopted, retired to his house at Sheen.

He was called out of retirement to implement a plan of his design to reform government rule. He was the architect of the Privy Council Ministry, which, though it failed, was an early effort to establish an executive along the lines of what later came to be understood as Cabinet government. Charles II disapproved of the scheme, which in his view took away too much of the Royal Prerogative, although in the exceptional circumstances of the Exclusion Crisis he was willing to give it a brief trial.

Temple later left Sheen and purchased Compton Hall, Farnham. He renamed the house Moor Park after Moor Park, Hertfordshire, a house he much admired and which influenced the formal gardens he built at Farnham. Here the later-famous Jonathan Swift was his secretary for most of the period from 1689 onward.[3] It was here that Swift met Esther Johnson, who became his lifelong companion and whom he immortalised as Stella.[Despite rumours that she was Temple's own daughter, the evidence suggests that her widowed mother lived in the house as companion to Temple's sister Martha. Temple installed his family motto "God has given us these opportunities for tranquility" above the door and took great pleasure from this house in his retirement from public life.

He took no part in the Glorious Revolution, but acquiesced to the new regime, and was offered, but refused, a role as Secretary of State.

Temple died in Moor Park, Surrey, England in 1699. A memorial was erected to him in Westminster Abbey and to his wife Dorothy and daughter Diana; in 1722 the name of his sister Martha was added. He was much loved by his friends; Swift wrote that all that was good and amiable in mankind departed with him.[8] The normally cynical Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, was deeply grieved, writing to Temple's sister Martha that " the chief pleasure I proposed to myself was to see him sometimes".

[KALKI]

Sir William Temple, (1628-1699) English statesman and diplomat, in his Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning (1690) he wrote:

"From these famous Indians, it seems most probable that Pythagoras learned, and transported into Greece and Italy, the greatest part of his natural and moral philosophy, rather than from the Aegyptians...Nor does it seem unlikely that the Aegyptians themselves might have drawn much of their learning from the Indians..long before..Lycurgus, who likewise traveled to India, brought from thence also the chief principles of his laws."

Temple's ideas remained in isolation in his period until they were revived in the middle of the 18th century when a battle raged between the 'believers' and the 'infidels' on the question of the value of Mosaic interpretation of history.

(source: Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art - By Partha Mitter p. 191).

Aryabhata, found the area of a triangle, a trapezium and a circle, and calculated the value of "pi" ( the relation of diameter