Sir Thomas and Lady Hester gained first-hand experience of wardship in the early part of the second decade of the seventeenth century when Sir Thomas acquired the wardships of the co-heiresses to Stantonbury, Buckinghamshire, Dorothy and Mary Lee, when both were beneath the age of 14 years. The circumstances in which these wardships came to the Temples, the purpose for which they were intended and the care which Thomas and Hester accorded the wards are the main subject of this chapter.

The sale of wardships has been studied from a rather different perspective from that adopted here. Work previously focused on sales of wardships as a source of income and patronage for the crown or individuals. Historians have debated whether it was a tale of corrupt practices. There has sometimes been an emphasis on describing and sympathizing with the fate of the wards, particularly when female. However, the acquisition of wardships by the aristocracy and gentry also has to be seen as part of developing investment strategies in the age before the foundation of the Bank of England and investment in stocks.

Joel Hurstfield describes the ‘evil’ trade in wardships, which made substantial profits for agents and middlemen, but individual aristocrats and gentlemen possibly regarded specific wardships as a contribution to the family coffers, present and future. For it is equally true that the purchase of a wardship might have, and often did have, a deeply personal implication for the individual families involved. These twin strands frequently became entangled in the approach to the wards themselves.

The Temples like so many of their class had great familiarity with the system of wardships and proceedings in the court that was there to protect the interests of the wards. In 1536 Thomas Herytage I had purchased the wardship of Anthony Styrley of Styrley, Nottinghamshire from Sir Nicholas Styrley apparently in anticipation. Anthony's mother was Isabel Spencer, daughter of John Spencer I, a distant relative of the Herytages. Thomas Herytage granted the rights to this wardship to Peter Temple (1516–78) and John Palmer of London, whose money had been used to buy the wardship in the first place, on 12 November 1537. Sir Thomas Temple found evidence that his grandfather Peter had also been granted the wardship of stepdaughter Alice Ratcliffe.