On his retirement, Major Temple settled in Devon and contemplated a farming life for his son Frederick, giving him a practical training to that end.

Four years later he was ordained, and, with the aim of improving the education of the very poor, he accepted the headship of Kneller Hall, a college founded by the government for the training of masters of workhouses and penal schools.

[3] Temple strengthened the school's academic reputation in the classics, but also instituted scholarships in natural science, built a laboratory, and recognised the importance of these subjects.

The authors of the volume were responsible only for their respective articles, but some of these were deemed so destructive that many people banned the whole book, and a noisy demand, led by Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, called on the headmaster of Rugby to dissociate himself from his comrades.

Temple's essay had dealt with the intellectual and spiritual growth of the race, and had pointed out the contributions made respectively by the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and others.

When later in the same year, however, Henry Phillpotts, bishop of Exeter, died, the prime minister turned again to Temple, and he accepted the bishopric of the city he knew so well.

[6] There were murmurings among his clergy against what they deemed his harsh control, but his real kindness soon made itself felt, and, during the sixteen years of his tenure, he overcame the prejudices against him, so that when, on the death of John Jackson in 1885, he was translated to London, the appointment gave general satisfaction.

Many of his clergy and candidates for ordination thought him a rather terrifying person, enforcing almost impossible standards of diligence, accuracy and preaching efficiency, but his manifest devotion to his work and his zeal for the good of the people won him general confidence.

When, in view of his growing blindness, he offered to resign the bishopric, he was urged to reconsider his proposal, and on the sudden death of Edward White Benson in 1896, though now seventy-six years of age, he accepted the see of Canterbury.

In the same year Temple and Archbishop of York William Maclagan issued a joint response to Apostolicae curae, a bull of Pope Leo XIII which denied the validity of Anglican orders.

In 1899 the archbishops again acted together, when an appeal was addressed to them by the united episcopate, to rule on the use of incense in divine service and on the carrying of lights in liturgical processions.

[11] His first charge as primate on "Disputes in the Church" was felt to be a most powerful plea for a more catholic and a more charitable temper, and again and again during the closing years of his life he came back to this same theme.

He was zealous also in the cause of foreign missions, and in a sermon preached at the opening of the new century he urged that a supreme obligation rested upon Britain at this epoch in the world's history to seek to evangelise all nations.

In 1860 at the famous meeting of the British Association which saw the debate between Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, Temple preached a sermon welcoming the insights of evolution.

[9] The bust is inside a marble niche designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield which displays his coat of arms impaled with those of Exeter and Canterbury on the left and right respectively.