Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Benson, Richard Meux
BENSON, RICHARD MEUX (1824-1915), divine, and founder of a religious order, the second son of Thomas Starling Benson, of Champion Lodge, Surrey, by his second wife, Eliza, only child of Richard Meux, was born at his father’s London residence, Bolton House, Russell Square, 6 July 1824. His father, who was high sheriff of Surrey (1814), had no profession and gave much time to hunting, shooting, and fishing. His mother, to whom he was devoted and to whom he owed his religious training, was descended from Anne, sister of Edward IV, as well as from the seventeenth-century divine, Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln [q.v.]. Through his mother Benson was also a cousin of the first Lord Brougham. After Benson’s birth his father lived at North Cray Place, Kent, until 1838 when he removed to Sketty Park, near Swansea. In 1837 the family occupied a château near Boulogne, and from 1839 to 1861 their home was the Manor House, Teddington, Middlesex, where Mr. Benson died in 1858 and his widow in 1859.
Richard Benson was educated at home with his elder brother, Henry Roxby, afterwards General Benson, who fought in the Crimea, commanded the 17th Lancers, and died in 1890. His education was sufficiently thorough to enable him, while still a youth, to escort his half-sister, Sarah Benson, to Germany in 1841, and to make a long foreign tour with her in 1848. Proceeding from Germany to Italy the brother and sister wintered in Rome, where they had the entrée to distinguished society. Benson saw much of the leading Italian theologians of the day, and used to walk with De Rossi, the archaeologist, then a youth of his own age. Cardinal Acton [q.v.] and other cardinals paid them some attention, and they had a private audience with the pope, Gregory XVI, who conversed not of theology but of Italian cities. Benson set himself to study thoroughly the Roman Church, but his studies did nothing to shake the beliefs in which he had been educated and he attended regularly the Anglican services then held in a hayloft outside the Porta del Popolo. Later they visited Naples, Venice, and Karlsbad, where Benson left his sister while he went to Dresden and Prague.
In October 1844 Benson went up to Christ Church, Oxford; in 1846 he was nominated by Dr. Pusey to a studentship and admitted on 24 December with Henry Parry Liddon, George William Kitchin, and George Ward Hunt. He retained his studentship till his death. He took his B.A. degree (second classes in literae humaniores and mathematics) in 1847, and gained the Kennicott scholarship for Hebrew in 1848, in which year he was ordained deacon by Bishop Wilberforce at Cuddesdon and became assistant curate of St. Mark’s, Surbiton, close to his home. He was ordained priest, by the same bishop, and graduated M.A. in 1849. In 1850 he became vicar of Cowley, two miles from Oxford, then a small village, although the parish extended as far as Magdalen bridge. He lived a life of study and devotion, eagerly promoted the practice of retreats, was a close friend of Henry Parry Liddon [q.v.], then vice-principal of Cuddesdon, and was much consulted by Anglicans inclined to become Roman Catholics. (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.]