A general picture of the quality of the relationship the Temples maintained with their daughters and granddaughters is elusive. This chapter concentrates on the daughters, daughters-in-law and grandchildren of Thomas and Hester Temple.

There was a realm of difference between the behaviour prescribed by puritan preachers for unmarried women and that practised in families. It is much simpler to discover what the conduct literature contained than to access the behaviour that was actually prevalent. Even more so is it difficult to demonstrate any socio-economic or religious distinctions in behaviour over a chronological spectrum: there is a danger that we perceive a static situation when, in reality, there was change over time.

The data regarding as yet unmarried daughters and granddaughters in the Temple connection is relatively sparse though often informative. There are a number of letters from both unmarried and married daughters to their parents. These seem to have been preserved not as treasured mementoes of parent/child relations but as containing useful information. Those that have survived are often difficult to interpret, given poor handwriting, idiosyncratic spelling and especially the damage suffered over the centuries. The spelling and punctuation reproduced in quotations from their letters illustrate this problem. For the most part additional information has to be derived from stray mentions in account books, memorandum books and papers, court cases, bills (which normally supply little information about the emotional attachment that may have existed) and other people's letters. With minor exceptions it is not possible to say how the Temples related to their very young children, either male or female. It is slightly easier to establish their attitude to older Temple children and teenagers. There is also the question of whether parents’ attitudes towards and expectations of their daughters and granddaughters changed when they entered the married state. Moreover, it would be interesting to examine in detail the attitude of daughters (and sons and in-laws) to their parents. Occasionally we can approach these issues laterally – through, for example, the letters of sons-in-law. Such requires extreme caution. No correspondence is transparent and the meaning of a letter's contents is yet more obscured when the information is at second-hand. I offer no apology for the speculative nature of some parts of this chapter but I remind the reader to approach it with caution. Where the meaning is ambiguous, I have quoted the evidence at length.