Sir Thomas Temple addressed his son and heir, Sir Peter Temple of Stowe, on the occasion of the heir's marriage in 1630 to Lady Christian Leveson, niece of Sir Richard Leveson of Trentham, Staffordshire, writing: ‘All foiles are fitt for a wise man, as the proverbe is, & as Sir Clement Throckmorton trewly said, that it is not so great a benefitt to have a good wife, as to love her.’

This letter provides a rare glimpse of Sir Thomas Temple's explicit thoughts and beliefs on any subject. It also serves as an entree to his approach to bringing up his four sons. This was characterized by appeals to Holy Writ underwritten by reasoned discourse. According to early modern educational thought, the purpose of a humanist education was to equip males to offer good advice in both public and private matters. Erasmus, as we are reminded by Gemma Allen, saw letters as appropriate vehicles for such counsel. Sir Thomas Temple, acquainted with such teaching at Oxford, pursued this example.

The letter is modelled upon the Ten Commandments and its advice echoes the division of the same into two tablets: ‘Two Comaundements concerning god, I would yow had espetiall care to keepe, which is not to take the name of god in vaine, secondly, remember not to profane the sabboth, which laste will be a principall meane, that yow shall keepe the rest of the comaundements.’

This passage emphasizes Sir Thomas's belief in the need to keep holy the sabbath day, a belief which is expressed in a few other letters in the archive. It also perhaps reflects anxiety about the company that his son was keeping.

Such anxiety is more explicitly addressed in the passage from which the opening quotation is taken. Christian was Peter's second wife; it was about ten years since his first wife, Anne Throckmorton, had died. Peter's father had mourned for Anne Throckmorton Temple, as is apparent from a scribbled note of May 1620 in his account book: ‘whereas Acres Temple … paid in paymente of parte of the said 400li to Ri[chard] Chaplin to be given for dole of my deare daughter in law the Lady An Temple’.