Baron Mount Temple
The titles of Viscount Palmerston and Baron Temple of Mount Temple were created in the Peerage of Ireland 12 March 1723 for Henry Temple, of East Sheen, eldest son of Sir John Temple, sometime Attorney General for Ireland. They became extinct on the death of his great-grandson, the 3rd Viscount, 18 October 1865. The third Viscount, who was a famous Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, had been married in 1839 to Emily, widow of the 5th Earl Cowper and a sister of another Prime Minister, the 2nd Viscount Melbourne. She died 11 September 1869, leaving her second husband's estates to her second son The Hon. William Francis Cowper, who thereupon adopted the surname Cowper-Temple. He served in various positions in the Liberal governments of the mid-nineteenth century, and on his retirement from the House of Commons was created Baron Mount Temple, of Mount Temple in the County of Sligo, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, on 25 May 1880. He died without issue on the 16 October 1888, when the peerage became extinct. However, it was later recreated for his great-nephew, the son of The Right Hon. Evelyn Ashley, private secretary to and biographer of the 3rd Viscount Palmerston abovementioned and the second son of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who had married Lord Mount Temple's sister Lady Emily Cowper.
Wilfrid William Ashley served as a Conservative Minister of Transport in the 1920s, and was created Baron Mount Temple, of Lee in the County of Southampton, again in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, on 13 January 1932. He died 3 July 1939, when the peerage became extinct. He had been married in 1901 to "Maudie" Cassel, only daughter of the Edwardian financier Sir Ernest Cassel, and their elder daughter Edwina, a considerable heiress, was married in 1922 to Lord Louis Mountbatten, later the last Viceroy of India.
Barons Temple of Mount Temple (1723)
- see under Viscount Palmerston
Barons Mount Temple (1880)
Barons Mount Temple (1932)
- Wilfrid William Ashley, 1st Baron Mount Temple (1867-1939)