Dorothy, Lady Temple, Gaspar Netscher, 1671
Dorothy Osborne (Chicksands, Bedfordshire, 1627 - Farnham, 1695) was the wife of the English diplomat and writer William Temple. She has been known by the letters she wrote to her future husband. Besides her letters, Osborne's life is remarkable because of her stubborn resistance to her marriage plans. Dorothy Osborne was the youngest in a family of eight children. Her father was the nobleman Peter Osborne, royal governor of the island of Guernsey, who was married to Lady Dorothy Danvers in 1609. Her two parents were convinced royalists.
During a crossing of the Channel, Dorothy William Temple, who came from a family of Roundheads, met followers of the Puritan-ruled parliamentary party. The two fell in love with each other, but because of the political opposites and economic reasons, a relationship was not appreciated by both families. They did not see each other for a long time, but there was a clandestine correspondence. The couple eventually married in 1655. The correspondence that took place between 1652 and 1654 kept her share, consisting of 77 letters that give a lively image of life and events of that time. The manuscripts are in the British Library. The letters were first published in book form by Edward Parry in 1888. The work was reprinted many times.
After her marriage, few letters have been preserved and they are not as brilliant as her letters from the time of her courtship. There are indications that she was very intensively involved in her husband's diplomatic career. William was stationed abroad several times, including in Brussels (in the Spanish Netherlands) and in the Republic. Temple was ambassador twice in The Hague.
In 1671, Charles II of England used Dorothy to provoke the Third English Sea War. On August 24th she sailed through the Dutch navy aboard the royal hunt 'Merlin'. The hunt shot sharply on a Dutch ship when it was only greeted with a flagged display, instead of a white smoke salute as prescribed for a warfare.
Osborne was an important and acknowledged authority in later marriages because of her friendship with both Willem III of Orange-Nassau and Princess Mary. Her personal friendship with Mary lasted until the queen died in 1694. Osborne (Lady Temple) received nine children, who died as a baby every two years. A daughter, Diana, died of pox when she was fourteen, and a son John committed suicide before his thirtieth. He was married and provided for Sir William and Lady Temple of two granddaughters: Elizabeth and Dorothy Temple.
Lady Temple and her husband were buried in Westminster Abbey.
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