(unitarian) body, but wide in their sympathies and broad in their charities beyond the limits of their sect. Edward was the founder, and George the benefactor, of three hospitals in Belfast (the 'Eye, Ear, and Throat,' the 'Samaritan,' and the 'Skin Diseases'), and their gifts to educational institutions were munificent. Both were unmarried. They left four sisters.
[Memoir in Disciple (Belf.), Feb. 1882; Hodges's Presidential Address to Belfast Nat. Hist. and Phil. Soc. on 'Industrial Progress in the North of Ireland,' 10 Nov. 1875; other particulars from Prof. Hodges.]
BENN or BEN, WILLIAM (1600–1680), divine, was born at Egremont in Cumberland, in November 1600. He was educated at the free school of St. Bees. He was, on the completion of his course at this celebrated school, 'transplanted thence to Queen's College, Oxford,' where, says Anthony à Wood, 'if I am not mistaken, he was a servitor.' On a presentation to the living of Oakingham in Berkshire, he left his university without taking a degree. But he found on going to Oakingham that one Mr Bateman, his contemporary at Oxford, had got another presentation to it. Rather than go to law about it, they agreed to take joint charge and to divide the income. This they did with mutual satisfaction for some years. But Benn, having been chosen as her chaplain by the Marchioness of Northampton, living in Somersetshire, left Oakingham to Bateman, and continued with his lady-patron until 1629. In that year, 'by virtue of a call from John White, the patriarch of Dorchester,' he went to Dorchester, and by White's influence was made preacher of All Saints there, where, Anthony à Wood informs us, he 'continued in great respect from the precise party till Bartholomew's day, an. 1662, excepting only two years, in which time he attended the said White when he was rector at Lambeth in Surrey, in the place of Dr. Featley, ejected.' Besides his constant
preaching in his own church he preached
'gratis on a week-day to the gaol prisoners,' and, his auditory increasing, he himself built a chapel within the gaol for their better accommodation.
In 1654 he was one of the assistants to the commissioners for ejecting 'scandalous, ignorant, and inefficient ministers and schoolmasters.' After his ejection by the Act of Uniformity, he remained at Dorchester 'to the time of his death; but for his preaching,' says Wood, 'in conventicles there and in the neighbourhood, he was often brought into trouble, and sometimes imprisoned and fined.' He died on 22 March 1680, and was buried in the churchyard of his own former church of All Saints. He published only 'A sober Answer to Francis Bampfield in Vindication of the Christian Sabbath against the Jewish, id est the observance of the Jewish still.' It is a masterly little treatise in the form of a letter (1672). After his death a volume of sermons entitled 'Soul Prosperity,' on 3 John 2 (1683), was published, and is one of the rarest of later puritan books.
[Calamy; Palmer's Nonconf. Mem. ii. 126–7; Hutchin's Dorset; Wilson's Hist. of Dissenters, iii. 436; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), iii. 1278; Benn's publications.]
BENNET, BENJAMIN (1674–1726), divine, was born at Willsborough, a village near to Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, in 1674. In early youth his health was very delicate, and during one severe illness he passed under deep religious convictions. On his recovery he formed a society of young men for prayer and religious conversation. He received his elementary education in his parish school. He proceeded next to Sheriff-Hales in Shropshire, under John Woodhouse. Woodhouse, on his ejection, had established an academy for the training of ‘toward youths,’ theologically and classically. He had at this time an average attendance of from forty to fifty students. Young Bennet, having here completed the course of study usual among nonconformists at that period, began his public ministry as a preacher-evangelist at Temple Hall, a village near his native place. He immediately succeeded John Sheffield, on the removal of that remarkable man to Southwark in 1697. He must have gone to Temple Hall and continued there some time on probation, for he was not formally ordained until 30 May 1699. This was done in Oldbury chapel in Shropshire by some of the surviving ejected ministers, along with three others, one of whom was John Reynolds of Shrewsbury. He soon became noted for his eloquence and persuasiveness in the pulpit and for his love of study. In 1703 he accepted an invitation to go to Newcastle-on-Tyne as colleague with the venerable Richard Gilpin [q. v.] The congregation had been weakened by a temporary secession under one of Dr. Gilpin's assistants, the Rev. Thomas Bradbury [q. v.] Bennet's ministry in Newcastle is far famed. He was wont to spend sixty hours a week in his study, and successive days were entirely consecrated to intercessory prayer and fasting. Besides original hymns, some of which are still in use, he wrote there a number of religious and histo-
