In order to understand relationships within the Temple family it is important to establish as far as possible the organization of the household and the ways in which both Sir Thomas and Lady Hester related not just to each other and to family members but also to their servants. This is all the more true of the Temples because of the ways in which some of those servants demonstrably had an impact upon the future of both family and estate. Servants acted as intermediaries in the relationships which the early Temples had with their kin and, indeed, with others.

Natasha Korda's invaluable discussion of the legal position and material practice regarding women's property rights under coverture has demonstrated their complexity. William Gouge's Domesticall Duties of 1622 at first presents what appears to be a straightforward denial that a married woman might hold any property, whether moveable or immoveable, but then proceeds to offer many exceptions to this rule. This was, it seems, as a direct response to the uproar caused by his earlier attempt to prevent the housewife from ‘disposing the common goods of the family without, or against her husband's consent’. Korda suggests that ‘ this rule may have been as honoured in the breach as in the observance’. Gouge gives the following exceptions to the rule that a wife can hold no property under coverture: paraphernalia ‘proper to wives’; and goods set aside as separate estate or as a jointure; and gifts made to herself where her husband has not adequately provided for her, which she may conceal from him. He also argues that the wife has de facto managerial control over common goods and does not need her husband's specific consent to spend them: ‘I doubt not but the wife hath power to dispose them; neither is she bound to ask any further consent of her husband. For it is the wives place and dutie to guide or governe the house.’ He specifies many circumstances in which the common law regarding women's absence of control over property is unworkable.