Life
Edward White Benson was born in Highgate, Birmingham, the son of a Birmingham chemical manufacturer. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA (8th classic) in 1852.
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 in 1880.
In 1883 he was appointed arch-bishop 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. 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. 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.
Hisdevotion to Saint Cyprian bore posthumous fruit with the publication of Cyprian, his life, his times, his work the following year.
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“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)