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.]
BENNETT, ALFRED WILLIAM (1833–1902), botanist, born at Clapham, Surrey, on 24 June 1833, was second son of William Bennett (d. 1873), a tea-dealer. Like his parents, he was a member of the Society of Friends. The father, a good field botanist, was intimate with the naturalists Edward Newman [q. v.] and Edward and Henry Doubleday [q. v.] ; he published 'A Narrative of a Journey in Ireland in 1847' and 'Joint-stock Companies' in 1861, and in 1851 retired to Brockham Lodge, Betchworth, Surrey, where it is said that he bred emus to the third generation. His mother, Elizabeth (d. 1891), wrote some religious books (Joseph Smith, Friends' Books, supplement, p. 56). Bennett's elder brother, Edward Trusted (1831-1908), at one time edited the 'Crusade,' a temperance magazine Save for some months in 1841-2 at the Pestalozzian School at Appenzell, Bennett was educated at home. Long walking tours in Wales, the west of England, and the lake district, undertaken by Bennett with his father and brother, were reported by them in the 'Phytologist' (iv. (1851), 312, 439 and (1852), 757-8). On the last occasion they called upon Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, and he accompanied them up Fairfield to show them Silene acaulis.
Bennett attended classes at University College, London, and graduated B.A. from the University of London in 1853, with honours in chemistry and botany, proceeding M.A. in 1855 and B.Sc. in 1868. After leaving college he acted for a short time as tutor in the family of Gurney Barclay, the banker. In 1858 he started business as a bookseller and publisher at
