In 1660 he made his first appearance in public life.  He sat in the convention which, in the midst of the general confusion that preceded the Restoration, was summoned by the chiefs of the army of Ireland to meet in Dublin.  After the King’s return an Irish parliament was regularly convoked, in which Temple represented the county of Carlow.  The details of his conduct in this situation are not known to us.  But we are told in general terms, and can easily believe, that he showed great moderation, and great aptitude for business.  It is probable that he also distinguished himself in debate; for many years afterwards he remarked that “his friends in Ireland used to think that, if he had any talent at all, it lay in that way.”

In May, 1663, the Irish parliament was prorogued, and Temple repaired to England with his wife.  His income amounted to about five hundred pounds a-year, a sum which was then sufficient for the wants of a family mixing in fashionable circles, He passed two years in London, where he seems to have led that easy, lounging life which was best suited to his temper.

He was not, however, unmindful of his interest.  He had brought with him letters of introduction from the Duke of Ormond, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to Clarendon, and to Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, who was Secretary of State.  Clarendon was at the head of affairs.  But his power was visibly declining, and was certain to decline more and more every day.  An observer much less discerning than Temple might easily perceive that the Chancellor was a man who belonged to a by-gone world, a representative of a past age, of obsolete modes of thinking, of unfashionable vices, and of more unfashionable virtues.  His long exile had made him a stranger in the country of his birth.  His mind, heated by conflict and by personal suffering, was far more set against popular and tolerant courses than it had been at the time of the breaking out of the civil war.  He pined for the decorous tyranny of the old Whitehall; for the days of that sainted king who deprived his people of their money and their ears, but let their wives and daughters alone; and could scarcely reconcile himself to a court with a seraglio and without a Star-Chamber.  By taking this course he made himself every day more odious, both to the sovereign, who loved pleasure much more than prerogative, and to the people, who dreaded royal prerogatives much more than royal pleasures; and thus he was at last more detested by the Court than any chief of the Opposition, and more detested by the Parliament than any pandar of the Court.