11 October 1896 A.D. Edward White Benson Dies—94th of 105 Archbishops of Canterbury
11 October 1896 A.D.
Edward White Benson Dies—94th
of 105 Archbishops of Canterbury
Edward White Benson (14
July 1829 – 11 October 1896) was the Archbishop of
Canterbury from 1883 until his death.Contents
·
1 Life
·
2 Legacy
Life
Edward White Benson was born in Highgate, Birmingham, the son of a Birmingham chemical manufacturer of the same name. He was
educated at King Edward's
School, Birmingham and Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he graduated BA (8th classic) in 1852.[2]
Benson began his career as a schoolmaster at Rugby
School in 1852, and was ordained deacon in 1852 and priest in
1857. In 1859 Benson was chosen by Prince Albert as the first Master (headmaster) of Wellington College, Berkshire, which had been built as the nation's memorial to the Duke
of Wellington. Benson was largely responsible for establishing
Wellington as a public school, closely
modelled on Rugby School, rather than the military academy originally planned.
From 1872 to 1877 he served as Chancellor of Lincoln
Cathedral, and first Bishop
of Truro from 1877–82. He founded Truro High School
for Girls[3] in 1880.
In 1883 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. While
at Canterbury, to avoid the prosecution before a lay tribunal of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln,
under the Public Worship
Regulation Act 1874 for six ritual
offences he heard the case in his own archiepiscopal court which
had been inactive since 1699. [4] In his judgement (often
called "the Lincoln Judgement"), he found against the Bishop on two
points, with a proviso as to a third that, when performing the manual acts
during the prayer of consecration in the Holy Communion service, the priest
must stand so that they can be seen by the people. Benson also tried to
amalgamate the two Convocations and the new houses of laity into a single assembly. In 1896 it was
established that they could 'unofficially' meet together.[5] In September of the same
year, the papal apostolic letter Apostolicae
Curae was published and Benson had started to work on a reply
before his sudden death of a heart
attack while attending Sunday service in St. Deiniol's Church, Hawarden, Wales on October 11, 1896 on a visit to former Prime Minister William
Gladstone. Three days later his body was put on the train at Sandycroft station to be returned to London.[6] where he was buried at Canterbury Cathedral, in a magnificent tomb located at the western end of the nave.
His devotion to Saint Cyprian bore posthumous fruit with the publication of Cyprian,
his life, his times, his work the following year.[7]
Legacy
Benson is best remembered for devising the Festival of Nine Lessons and
Carols, an order first used in Truro
Cathedral on Christmas Eve, 1880. Considerably revised by Eric
Milner White for King's College Cambridge, this service is now used every
Christmas around the world.
Benson told Henry
James a simple, rather inexpert story he had heard about the
ghosts of evil servants who tried to lure young children to their deaths. James
recorded the hint in his Notebooks and eventually used it as the starting-point for his classic ghost
story, The Turn of the
Screw.
In 1914, a boarding
house at Wellington College was named after him. Benson House carries the emblem of a blue Tudor
Rose, and is situated outside of the main College.
Personal life
Benson married
his distant cousin Mary Sidgwick,
the sister of philosopher Henry. The couple had six children. Their fifth child was the novelist E. F. Benson, best remembered for his Mapp
and Lucia novels. Another son was A. C. Benson, the author of the lyrics to Elgar's "Land of Hope and
Glory" and master of Magdalene College,
Cambridge. Their sixth and youngest child, Robert Hugh Benson,
became a minister of the Church of England before converting to Roman
Catholicism and writing many popular novels. Their daughter, Margaret
Benson, was an artist, author, and amateur Egyptologist. None of the children married; and some appeared to suffer from mental
illnesses, possibly bipolar
disorder. After the archbishop's death, his widow set up
household with Lucy Tait, daughter of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Campbell
Tait;[8] and a full-length biography
of her was published in 2011, casting light on the Bensons' domestic life.
Further
reading
·
Rodney
Bolt, As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil: The Impossible Life of Mary
Benson (2011) [reprinted in paperback as Rodney Bolt - The Impossible
Life Of Mary Benson - The Extraordinary Story of a Victorian Wife, 2012]
·
Gwen
Watkins, E. F. Benson & His Family and Friends (2003)
·
G.
Palmer, N. Lloyd, Father of the Bensons (1998)
·
David
Williams, Genesis and Exodus: A Portrait of the Benson Family (1979)
·
A. C.
Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson, Sometime Archbishop of Canterbury
(2 vols., 1899)
References
2.
Jump up ^ "Benson,
Edward White (BN848EW)". A Cambridge Alumni Database.
University of Cambridge.
3.
Jump up ^ Amy Key Clarke, The Story
of Truro High School, the Benson Foundation. Truro: Oscar Blackford, 1979
7.
Jump up ^ Cross & Livingstone The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church OUP(1974) art."Benson, Edward
White"
8.
Jump up ^ Vicinus, Martha (2004). Intimate Friends:
women who loved women (1778–1928). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-85563-5.
External
links
|
New diocese
|
Bishop of Truro
1877–1883 |
|
Archbishop of Canterbury
1883–1896 |
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