Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Benham, William
BENHAM, WILLIAM (1831–1910), hon. canon of Canterbury and author, was born on 15 Jan. 1831 at West Meon near Petersfield, Hampshire, where his grandfather and his father, James Benham, successively held the position of village postmaster. He was educated at the village school, built by the rector, Henry Vincent Bayley [q. v.], who made him his secretary, and taught him Greek and Latin. At his death Bayley left instructions that the boy's education should be continued, and he was sent in 1844 to St. Mark's College, Chelsea, recently established under the headmastership of Derwent Coleridge [q. v.], to be trained as a schoolmaster. On completing his course he taught in a rural school, and was tutor to Sir John Sebright between 1849 and 1852. Then by his own exertions and the help of Archdeacon Bayley's family he was enabled to attend the theological department of King's College, London, where the influence of F. D. Maurice permanently affected his religious position. In 1857 he was ordained deacon and priest in 1858. Appointed divinity tutor and lecturer in English literature at St. Mark's, Chelsea, still under Derwent Coleridge, he then first exhibited his gift as a teacher and his power of stimulating character. He remained at Chelsea until in 1865 he became editorial secretary to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. At the same time he engaged in Sunday ministerial work as curate of St. Lawrence Jewry, under Benjamin Morgan Cowie [q. v. Suppl. I]. From 1866 to 1871 he was also professor of modern history at Queen's College, Harley Street, in succession to F. D. Maurice.
Meanwhile his preaching attracted the attention of Archbishop Longley, who made him in 1867 first vicar of the newly formed parish of Addington, where the archbishop resided. The health of the primate was giving way. Benham assisted him as his private secretary during the anxious period of the first Lambeth Conference in 1867, and was with him at his death in 1868. Comparative leisure at Addington enabled Benham to increase his literary work. He produced an edition of Cowper's poetry in 1870, worked on a commentary on the New Testament, and published in 1873 his well-known 'Companion to the Lectionary' (new edit. 1884). With Tait, Longley's successor in the Archbishopric, Benham 's relations at Addington grew very intimate. Tait gave him the Lambeth degree of B.D., made him one of the six preachers of Canterbury, and in 1872 bestowed on him the important vicarage of Margate. Here Benham restored the parish church, was chairman of the first school board of the town, and made the Church Institute a centre of intellectual and spiritual life. But he found time to edit the memoirs of Catherine and Craufurd Tait, the wife and son of the archbishop (1879; abridged edit. 1882). In 1880 Tait made him vicar of Marden, and in 1882 he was appointed rector of St. Edmund the King with St. Nicholas Acons, Lombard Street. That benefice he held for life.
He made St. Edmund's Church a preaching centre of exceptional intellectual force and impartiality; ‘Lombard Street in Lent’ (1894), the title of a course of addresses by various preachers, presented the kind of sermon which he thought a City church should supply, in order to attract the business man in the luncheon hour. In 1888 Archbishop Benson made him hon. canon of Canterbury, and in 1898 Hartford University, U.S.A., granted him the degree of D.D. He was Boyle lecturer in 1897, and rural dean of East City from 1903 till his death.
Benham's literary activity was always great. His collaboration with Dr. Davidson in the writing of the ‘Life of Archbishop Tait’ (1891) was the most important of his later works. His editorship of the long series of cheap reprints entitled the ‘Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature’ was a laborious and laudable effort to popularise good literature. But the characteristic work of the last twenty years of his life was the lightly written series of miscellaneous paragraphs which he contributed to the ‘Church Times’ week by week under the heading ‘Varia’ and with the signature of ‘Peter Lombard.’ He died of heart failure on 30 July 1910, and was buried at Addington. Benham was twice married: (1) to Louisa, daughter of Lewis Engelbach, by whom he had three daughters; (2) to Caroline, daughter of Joseph Sandell of Old Basing, Hampshire, who survived him.
Besides the works mentioned, and a translation of ‘The Imitatio’ (1874; new ed. 1905), Benham's chief works were: 1. ‘The Gospel according to St. Matthew … with Notes,’ 1862. 2. ‘The Epistles for the Christian Year with Notes,’ 1865. 3. ‘The Church of the Patriarchs,’ 1867. 4. ‘A short History of the Episcopal Church in the United States,’ 1884. 5. ‘Winchester’ (in ‘Diocesan Histories’), 1884. 6. ‘Sermons for the Church's Year, original and selected,’ 2 vols. 1883–4. 7. ‘The Dictionary of Religion; an Encyclopædia of Christian and other Religious Doctrines, … Terms, History, Biography,’ 1887; reissued 1891, begun by J. H. Blunt. 8. ‘Winchester Cathedral,’ 1893; illustrated, 1897. 9. ‘Rochester Cathedral,’ 1900 (both in ‘English Cathedrals’). 10. ‘Mediæval London,’ 1901 and 1911, with Charles Welch. 11. ‘Old St. Paul's Cathedral,’ 1902. 12. ‘The Tower of London,’ 1906 (all three in the ‘Portfolio Monographs’). 13. ‘St. John and his Work’ (‘Temple’ series of Bible handbooks), 1904. 14. ‘Old London Churches,’ 1908. 15. ‘Letters of Peter Lombard,’ 1911, posthumous, with a preface by Archbishop Davidson.
[Memoir by his daughter, Mrs. Dudley Baxter, prefixed to the Letters of Peter Lombard, 1911; The Times, 1 Aug. 1910; Treasury, Oct. 1902; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; Crockford's Clerical Directory.]