It is said that he was a pupil and assistant of Wenceslaus Hollar, and some of the prints which bear his name as the publisher have been assumed to be his own work; but there is no actual evidence that he ever practised engraving.
There is a mezzotint portrait of him by Place, after G. Heemskerk, with the motto "Cavete vobis principes", and the figure of a nonconformist minister in the Cryes is said to represent him.
[1] Establishing himself in The Strand as a book and print seller about 1680, Tempest issued some sets of plates of birds and beasts etched by Francis Place and John Griffier from drawings by Francis Barlow; and some mezzotint portraits by Place and others, mainly of royal personages.
[4] The celebrated Cryes of the City of London, which he published in 1711, was a series of 74 portraits, from drawings by Marcellus Laroon the elder.
It shows itinerant dealers and other remarkable characters who at that time frequented London streets.