During the War of the Quadruple Alliance Temple led a force of 4,000 troops on a raid on the Spanish coastline which captured Vigo and occupied it for ten days before withdrawing.

[1] After becoming a captain in Babington's Regiment in 1689, he fought under William III during the Williamite War in Ireland against the Jacobite Irish Army of James II.

[2] From 1711, he made dramatic changes to his family estate at Stowe; the work was carried out under the guidance of John Vanbrugh, a skilled architect, and the future royal gardener, Charles Bridgeman.

However, after George I ascended the throne following the Hanoverian Succession, Temple became ambassador to Vienna and was created Baron Cobham in October 1714.

In September 1719, during the War of the Quadruple Alliance, Temple led a force of 4,000 troops on a raid on the Spanish coastline which captured Vigo and occupied it for ten days before withdrawing.

[5][6] Temple generally supported the government of Sir Robert Walpole once it came to power in April 1721 and was rewarded with the colonelcy of the King's Own Regiment of Horse later that year.

[8] Temple fell out with Prime Minister Robert Walpole in 1733 and formed a faction in the Whig Party to oppose the Excise Bill which resulted in his being stripped of his colonelcy again.

[2] Temple provided patronage to the rising star of the Whig Party, William Pitt, securing him a cornet's commission in his regiment.

Cobham came to an agreement with his heirs, distant cousins on whom the estate would have been entailed, on order to favour the family of his sister Hester Grenville.