There his great wealth evidently secured him consideration, and he was given the best rooms in the Hall, that very set looking on to New College Lane which Sir John Maltravers afterwards occupied.
In the first half of the eighteenth century the romance of the middle ages, though dying, was not dead, and the occult sciences still found followers among the Oxford towers.

From his early years Temple's mind seems to have been set strongly towards mysticism of all kinds, and he and Jocelyn were versed in the jargon of the alchemist and astrologer, and practised according to the ancient rules.

It was his reputation as a necromancer, and the stories current of illicit rites performed in the garden-rooms at St.John's, that contributed largely to his being dismissed from that College.

He had also become acquainted with Francis Dashwood, the notorious Lord le Despencer, and many a winter's night saw him riding through the misty Thames meadows to the door of the sham Franciscan abbey.

In his diaries were more notices than one of the "Franciscans" and the nameless orgies of Medmenham.
He was devoted to music.