Dorothy Osborne (1627-95), letter-writer, came from a gentry family with a distinguished record in English public life. She was the youngest daughter of Sir Peter Osborne (1585-1654), Treasurer's Remembrancer of the Exchequer and royalist governor of the Channel Islands, based at Castle Cornet, Guernsey, during the Civil War, and of Dorothy Danvers (1590-1650), of Dauntsey, Wilts. She was born at Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, a Gilbertine monastery dating back to the 12th Century but evacuated in 1538 and eventually becoming the property of her great- grandfather, Peter Osborne (1521-92), Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasure's Remembrancer of the Exchequer .
Dorothy Osborne met William Temple, the recipient of her letters, …
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