(Sir) Francis Cowley Burnand [q.v.] went to live with Benson for a time, but ultimately seceded to the Church of Rome.
In 1859, his parents being dead, Benson proposed to give himself to missionary work in India, but the marking out of Cowley Common as a site for an Oxford suburb caused Bishop Wilberforce to press Benson to give up the plan, and he devoted himself to providing for the new district. A sermon preached by John Keble at Wantage on 22 July 1863 [No. 5 in Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, 1880] moved Benson to think of founding a community for men, and in 1865 he laid his plan before Bishop Wilberforce, who agreed to be responsible for the episcopal oversight of the work and to give a preacher’s licence to any priest who joined the community. On 27 December 1866 the society of mission priests of St. John the Evangelist was formally constituted by Benson, S. W. O’Neill (a former Eton master), and C. C. Grafton (later bishop of Fond du Lac), each of whom took a life vow of celibacy, poverty, and obedience. Benson was at once elected superior and still held that office in 1884, when the bishop of Oxford (Dr. Mackarness) became visitor and formally approved the statutes and the rule. About the beginning of 1866 Benson had removed from Cowley village to a house not far from the iron church which he had erected in the new district in 1859. In 1868 the Society moved into the mission house in Marston Street. In 1870 old Cowley was separated ecclesiastically from the new district, which was created a parish as Cowley St. John with Benson as its vicar. In November of that year Benson went to America to establish a branch house in Boston, to preach missions and conduct retreats. He returned in September 1871. In 1886 he resigned his vicarage, and in 1890 his office as superior, in which he was succeeded by Robert Lay Page. He went to India, and after working there proceeded again to Boston in 1892. He returned to Cowley in 1899 and remained there till his death.
Benson had a frame described as compact of ‘catgut and iron’ and he was rigorously ascetic, spending whole nights in prayer and writing, and even in his ninety-first year fasting a whole day. As a preacher he had no popular gifts; he was at his best in conducting retreats or addressing his community, being eloquent, original, and fertile in illustration. In theology he was whole-heartedly loyal to the Anglican position as representing his conception of true catholicism.
He disliked one-sided teaching and over-definition and had no sympathy with later doctrinal developments, e.g. of Reservation ‘after the Roman manner’. He had a wide and cultivated mind; literature, art, poetry, music, and history, all appealed to him. But his one real interest was that of an apostle and a missionary. His organization of the community life for men was a great achievement; many years before his death the ‘Cowley Fathers’ had become an honoured name in the Church of England, and the Society was established in India and in South Africa as well as in the United States. The success of his work made Benson unquestionably ‘one of the greatest spiritual forces in the English Church during the latter half of the nineteenth century’ [Bishop Hall in Letters, p. 1].
In appearance Benson was short, thin, and wiry; in later years he was much bent with rheumatism and his very white face was deeply lined. Eventually he became deaf and blind, but he was still mentally vigorous and his spiritual influence in no way lessened. Naturally reserved and shy and by training austere, he was exceedingly tender-hearted and had a swift sense of humour. He died at the Mission House, Cowley, 14 January 1915, and is buried in the cemetery adjoining the parish church of St. Mary and St. John.
Of Benson’s many books, Redemption (a course of sermons, 1861), two expository works, The Wisdom of the Son of David (1860) and The Divine Rule of Prayer (1866), as well as his well-known Manual of Intercessory Prayer, pt. i (1863), belong to the period before the founding of the community at Cowley. His Bible Teachings (1875) illustrates the balance of his eucharistic teaching; his devotional works, Benedictus Dominus (1876), The Final Passover (1884, 1893-1895), and Spiritual Readings (1879, 1882), exhibit his deep spiritual insight. His later years were devoted to a commentary on the Psalms, The War Songs of the Prince of Peace (1901).
[G. Congreve and W. H. Longridge, Letters of Richard Meux Benson, 1916, and Further Letters, 1920; Church Times, 8 August 1924; private information; personal knowledge.]
BENSON, ROBERT HUGH (1871-1914), Catholic writer and apologist, the fourth son and youngest child of Edward White Benson [q.v.], afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, by his wife, Mary Sidgwick (a second-cousin), was born
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