Benson,

Benson, EDWARD WHITE, Archbishop of Canterbury, born near Birmingham in 1829, graduated at Cambridge in 1852 as a first-class and senior optime, and was for some time a master at Rugby. He held the head-mastership of Wellington College from its opening in 1858 to 1872, when he was made a canon and chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral. In 1875 he was appointed chaplain-in-ordinary to the Queen, and in December 1876 was nominated to the newly-erected bishopric of Truro. Here he began the building of a cathedral (1880-87), most of the first cost, £110,000, having been gathered by his own energy. In 1882 he was translated to Canterbury to succeed Dr Tait as primate of all England. A high churchman, Dr Benson was frequently select preacher at both universities, and published several volumes of sermons, a small work on Cathedrals, and a valuable article on St Cyprian. A distinguished ecclesiastical lawyer and diplomatist, he gave the important judgment in the Lincoln case on ritual. He died suddenly at Hawarden, October 11, 1896. See his work, Cyprian: His Life, His Times, His Works (1897), and Life by his son, A. C. Benson (1899). His third son, Edward Frederic (b. 1867), is author of Dodo (1893), The Rubicon (1894), and other works.