If one visits Stowe House today, little attention is given to the Temples who owned the land before Cobham. It is assumed, probably correctly, that visitors are interested not in the history of the Temples but in the heritage represented by the grand eighteenth-century mansion and particularly its gardens. No apology is made for concentrating here upon the internal mechanics of family life among the Temples who preceded Cobham and, indeed, Sir Richard Temple the 3rd Baronet of Stowe, as seen through their archival and largely manuscript remains. Since the groundwork done by E.F. Gay and Godfrey Davies in the first half of the twentieth century, the early Temple family has been little studied, despite voluminous archival remains. This micro-history is intended to provide an essential counterweight to the fashionable thematic macro-histories, which cover broad chronologies and large geographical areas. Historians need both if they are to understand past societies on their own terms. The study of detailed case histories such as this should allow the historian to place ‘examples’ or ‘case studies’ in the proper context that supplies meaning. The book is principally concerned with establishing why family mattered to the Temples, the differing roles played by family members, and the linked issue of how the Temples conducted their personal family relationships within and outwith the household.

While the reader will not find here a chronological narrative of the lives of the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Temples of Stowe, they will nonetheless learn a good deal about the way in which they lived. A serious attempt is made also to relate these findings about the Temples to a number of debates and areas of interest in modern scholarship. The subjects of kinship and family have received important attention from other historians, historical demographers and historical sociologists. Not least, family historians have suggested the relevance of their work to continuity and change within the state itself. In particular, evidence from the courts has been used to show how the ordering of family life was negotiated through litigation. But we must walk before we can run. A micro-history of the early modern family will afford a valuable corrective to these macrostudies: there is a need for both. The book is principally concerned with Sir Thomas and Lady Hester Temple and their roles and relationships. This first part consists of three chapters.