{{Short description|British writer, historian (1675-1752)}} {{Use British English|date=September 2014}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2026}} {{Infobox person | name = Temple Stanyan | image = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1675|02|08}}<ref name="DNB">Philip Woodfine, Claire Gapper, 'Stanyan, Abraham (1672–1732)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, (2004)</ref> | birth_place = Monken Hadley | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1752|03|25|1675|02|08}}<ref name="memorial" /> | death_place = Woodcote, Oxfordshire | resting_place = Church of St Peter and St Paul, Checkendon | resting_place_coordinates = {{Coord|51.5424|-1.0450|type:landmark|display=inline}} | alma_mater = Christ Church, Oxford | parents = {{Plainlist| * Lawrence Stanyan (d. 1725) * Dorothy Knapp (d.1730)}} | relatives = {{Plainlist | * Abraham Stanyan (brother) * Sir Richard Temple, 3rd Baronet (uncle by marriage) * Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham (cousin) }} | occupation = Civil servant | spouse = {{Plainlist | * Elizabeth Boys (dates unknown) * Susannah Hobbs (1721–1725, her death) * Grace Pauncefort (? – 1752, his death) }} | module = {{Infobox writer|embed=yes | language = English | period = 1707-1739 | notable_works =''Grecian History'' | subject =The history of Ancient Greece
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'''Temple Stanyan''' (1675–1752)<ref name="memorial" /> was an English civil servant, politician and writer. He is most known for his ''Grecian History'', first published in 1707, which became a standard work on the history of ancient Greece in the early part of the 18th century.
==Early life== Stanyan was born on 8 February 1675 at Monken Hadley, then part of Middlesex. He was one of eight children of Lawrence Stanyan (died 1725), merchant, farmer, and commissioner of the revenue, of Monken Hadley, and Dorothy Stanyan (''nee'' Knapp). One of his older brothers was Abraham Stanyan, who would later serve as the British ambassador to Switzerland, the Ottoman Empire and to Austria. Stanyan's uncle-by-marriage (the husband of an aunt) was Sir Richard Temple, 3rd Baronet, after whom he may have been named.
Stanyan entered Westminster School in 1691 as a Queen's Scholar. He enrolled at Christ Church, Oxford in June 1695 but did not take a degree.<ref name="DNB" /> In May 1697, Sir Richard Temple died and Stanyan inherited one of his properties, Rawlins Manor (Woodcote Manor) in Oxfordshire.<ref name="Lobel">{{cite web |url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63771 |title=Parishes: South Stoke |editor=Mary Lobel |publisher=Institute of Historical Research |year=1962 |work=A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 7: Dorchester and Thame hundreds |accessdate=31 August 2013 }}</ref>
==Career== Stanyan entered government service after leaving Oxford and by 1715 was under-secretary for the Northern Department (the department responsible for foreign relations with Northern European countries). He transferred to the Southern Department (the department for Southern Europe) as under-secretary in 1717, but he lost this position a year later. In 1719, he became Clerk of the Privy Council, succeeding his brother Abraham in the post. In 1724, he also regained the under-secretaryship at the Southern Department.<ref name="DNB" />
Stanyan became a Fellow of the Royal Society on 12 May 1726, after being proposed by Francis Nicholson.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=%28%28text%29%3D%27Stanyan%27%29 | title=Temple Stanyan | publisher=The Royal Society | accessdate=31 August 2013}}</ref> Abraham Stanyan was a prominent member of the Kit Kat Club, as was his cousin Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham and some sources state Temple was also a member.<ref>{{cite book | title=Italy's Lost Greece: Magna Graecia and the Making of Modern Archaeology | publisher=Oxford University Press | author=Ceserani, Giovanna | year=2012 | pages=101 | isbn=978-0199744275}}</ref>
In 1731, he was succeeded as Clerk of the Privy Council by Gilbert West, leaving the Southern Department in 1735.<ref name="DNB" />
==Personal life== Stanyan married three times. His first wife, Elizabeth Boys (née Shirley), was the widow of William Boys. His married his second wife, Susannah Hobbs (bap. 1689, d. 1725), on 3 January 1721. His third marriage was to Grace Pauncefort (1692/3–1768).
Stanyan died at his seat, Rawlins Manor, on 25 March 1752 and was buried at the church of St Peter and St Paul, Checkendon, there is a memorial to him inside the church.<ref name="memorial">{{cite AV media | url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/amthomson/5601290068/ | title=Temple Stanyan Memorial 1751, Checkendon | publisher=Aidan McRae Thomson | date=4 April 2011 | medium=Image}}</ref>{{efn|24 March 1751, is given as the date of his death on his memorial at the church of St Peter and St Paul, Checkendon. However, at the time, the Old style date notation was in use so year was in fact 1752. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives the date as 25 March 1752.}}
He was survived by his third wife. His daughter Catherine later became the second wife of Admiral Charles Hardy in 1759. Their eldest son, Temple Hardy, was likely named after Temple Stanyan and was a notable Royal Navy officer during the French Revolutionary wars.
==Works== The first volume of his two-volume book ''Grecian History, from the Original of Greece, to the Death of Philip of Macedon'' was published in 1707 by Jacob Tonson; there was a 32-year gap before the publication of the second volume in 1739.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://estc.bl.uk/T102862 | title=Full Record: The Grecian History. Volume the first. Containing the space of about 1684 years. By Temple Stanyan. Adorn'd with cuts. | publisher=British Library | work=English Short Title Catalogue | accessdate=1 September 2013 |oclc=181835432}}</ref> This was published alongside a second, revised, edition of the first volume.<ref>Stanuan, T. (1739). ''The Grecian History: From the original of Greece, to the end of the Peloponnesian War. Containing the space of about 1684 years''. In two volumes. By Temple Stanyan ... Volume the first. London, Printed for J. and R. Tonson.{{OCLC|79521540}}</ref>
The ''Grecian History'' was the first major English work on ancient Greece that was aimed at the general public and it became very successful.<ref>{{cite book | title=Ideology and Foreign Policy in Early Modern Europe (1650–1750) | publisher=Ashgate Publishing | author1=Onnekink, David |author2=Rommelse, Gijs | year=2011 | isbn=978-1409419143|pages=120}}</ref> It was the standard work on the topic during the 18th century<ref name="DNB" /> and editions were published in 1751, 1759, 1766, 1774, 1775 and 1781. It was translated into French by Denis Diderot in 1743. In the work, Stanyan, in common with better-known thinkers such Montesquieu and Rousseau, lavishes praise on Sparta, for being a strong stable state that was immune from factionalism and political unrest. He condemns the democratic constitution of Classical Athens, claiming that it suffered from these failings.<ref>{{cite book | title=The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain | publisher=Yale University Press | author=Turner, Frank | year=1984 | pages=189 | isbn=0300032579}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Herman |first=Gabriel |title=Morality and behaviour in democratic Athens : a social history |date=2006 |isbn=978-0-521-85021-6 |location=Cambridge |pages=86 |oclc=71347534}}</ref>
Towards the end of the 18th century, Stanyan's history was superseded by William Mitford's ''History of Greece'', the five volumes of which were published, one by one, between 1783 and 1810. Although later in the 19th century, that work itself came to be seen as flawed as it reflected the author's reactionary politics and his anti-democratic and anti-Jacobin views.<ref>{{cite book | title=The Oxford History of Historical Writing: 1400–1800 | publisher=Oxford University Press | author1=Rabasa, José | author2=Feldherr, Andrew| author3=Woolf, Daniel R. | author4=Hardy, Grant | year=2012 | pages=529 | isbn=978-0199219179}}</ref>
Stanyan made a contribution to a collaborative translation of Ovid's, ''Metamorphoses'' edited by Samuel Garth, that was published by Tonson in 1717.<ref name="Rogers2004" /> Stanyan translated ''The Story of Polyxena and Hecuba'' in Book XIII.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ovid |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2mlZAAAAYAAJ&dq=Temple+Stanyan+Ovid&pg=PA454 |title=Ovid's Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books |publisher=J. Tonson |year=1717|page=454 |language=en |oclc=2204282}}</ref> Other contributors to the work were Alexander Pope, John Dryden, Joseph Addison, William Congreve and Nicholas Rowe.<ref name="Rogers2004">{{cite book|author=Pat Rogers|title=The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=udRlsDhfhoUC&pg=PA261|accessdate=1 September 2013|year=2004|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-313-32426-0|pages=261–}}</ref><ref> OVID, et al. (1717). ''Ovid's Metamorphoses in fifteen books''. London, Printed for Jacob Tonson at Shakespear's-Head over against Katharine-Street in the Strand.{{OCLC|123279498}}</ref> He also contributed to a 1726 collection of English and Latin poems on archery and the Royal Company of Archers<ref>(1726). ''Poems in English and Latin: on the archers, and Royal-Company of archers'' Edinburgh {{OCLC|68350275}}</ref> and composed the Latin inscription on the plinth of John Michael Rysbrack's 1735 statue of George II at Greenwich Hospital.<ref>{{cite book|author=James Caulfield|title=Memoirs of the Celebrated Persons composing the Kit-Cat Club; with a prefatory account of the origin of the association|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YkRVAAAAcAAJ|accessdate=31 August 2013|year=1821|publisher=Hurst, Robinson & Company|page=211}}</ref>
==Notes== {{notelist}}
==References== ;Citations {{Reflist|30em}} ;Sources and Bibliography *{{Cite ODNB|id=26292|title=Stanyan, Temple}}
==External links== * [https://archive.org/details/grecianhistoryf00stangoog The Grecian History], volume 1 of the 1751 edition at archive.org
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stanyan, Temple}} Category:1675 births Category:1752 deaths Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Category:People from Monken Hadley Category:People educated at Westminster School, London Category:Scholars of ancient Greek history Category:18th-century English historians Category:18th-century English male writers Category:Civil servants from London Category:Politicians from the London Borough of Barnet Category:English male non-fiction writers