Frederick Temple (1821-1902) was Stow’s fourth cousin, his grandmother (Anne Stow) being a cousin of Stow’s grandfather (Fenwick Stow). There is no solid evidence that Stow and Temple ever met but ‘Frederick Temple claimed to belong to the Stowe branch of the Temple family, of which Richard Grenville, third duke of Buckingham and Chandos, was the head’[footnote]Spooner, H. M. ‘Temple, Frederick (1821–1902).’ Rev. Mark D. Chapman. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 15 June 2009 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36451>.[/footnote] and it is inconceivable that Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, a mutual friend, did not introduce the two men. Following an education at Eton, Temple went on to Oxford leaving in 1848, ‘on the advice of Sir J. P. Kay Shuttleworth to undertake work under the committee of council on education, first as examiner in the education office at Whitehall until the end of 1849, then as principal of Kneller Hall, between Whitton and Twickenham, a training college for workhouse schoolmasters’.[footnote]Ibid.[/footnote]

The training school was not a success, there was controversy over its use in the educational field, and it was closed in 1856.[footnote] www.twickenham-museum.org.uk/detail.asp?ContentID=126. (May, 2010). Etching taken from the frontispiece to the Minutes of the Committee of Council, 1846.[/footnote]

Temple went on to be inspector of training colleges for men, another area in which he and his cousin, Stow, shared an interest. Temple also contributed an essay on ‘National Education’ to the Oxford Essays of 1856, a further connection with Stow. Temple became Archbishop of Canterbury, as did his grandson, the well-known William Temple.[footnote]Gaskell Family Website available at http://www.gaskellfamily.com/ (May, 2010)[/footnote]

In all, Kneller Training College received £41,809 in grants from the CCE (to 1851), a sum which must have infuriated Stow.[footnote] Mason, D. M. (1985) The Expenditure of the Committee of Council on Education, 1839-52 in Journal of Educational Administration and History, 1478-7431, Volume 17, Issue 1, 1985, pps. 29.[/footnote]