CHAPTER I. EARLY LIFE AND FAMILY. "Vivitur parvo bene, cui paternum THE name Benson is pre-eminently unromantic; it suggests (quite erroneously) a Hebrew patronymic, being as a matter of fact, as Mr Henry Bradshaw proved, nothing but the Scandinavian name Björnson, a hunter's appellation, "Son of the Bear." It has no patrician savour, nor any particular historical associations; moreover no certain connection can be established between the family of the Archbishop and the families of the few eminent Bensons. The Archbishop was descended from a stock of Yorkshire yeomen-"dalesmen" to give them their proper name -"the rude forefathers of the hamlet "-" simple persons," as Michel Angelo said, "who wore no gold on their garments"; or as Lucretius wrote: An ancient race, to simple duties vowed, The earliest ancestor discoverable is a certain Thomas Benson, Ranger or Forestiarius of the Nidderdale Forest belonging to Fountains Abbey. He acquired the freehold, on the dissolution of the Abbey, of the forest lodge of Branga which he inhabited. On the small estate, now 1 "Anticum genus ut pietate repletum, B. I. Perfacile angustis tolerarit finibus aevum." LUCR. 11. 1167. I known as Banger Houses, near the secluded hamlet of Thornthwaite, in the parish of Pateley Bridge, ruled a succession of sturdy yeomen, son inheriting from father for nearly three hundred years. Then came a generation of mercantile enterprise. About the middle of the eighteenth century a Christopher Benson, who enjoyed the patriarchal title of "Old Christopher" in the dale, made a modest fortune, and acquired land and houses at Pateley Bridge, and at the end of the same century we find two of his sons, Christopher and Edward Benson, the former a substantial York merchant, and the latter a prosperous man of business living in a prebendal house in the Close at Ripon. Edward's eldest son, White Benson, was born at Ripon in 1777, the same year in which his father succeeded to an estate left him by Mr Francis White, the Chapter Clerk of Ripon, for no better reason than that they had often been partners in a rubber of whist. Christopher Benson of York left two daughters, both well-endowed with this world's goods. One of them, Eleanor Sarah, married her first cousin, White Benson, the Archbishop's grandfather: the other married a large mill-owner of Skipton, Mr William Sidgwick, my mother's grandfather; thus the Archbishop and his future wife were second cousins. White Benson, a brilliant and attractive young fellow, went into the Army, entering the 6th Royals, Warwickshire Regiment. He was the friend and boon companion of his Colonel, Prince William Frederick, afterwards Duke of Gloucester: he left the Army with the rank of Captain, having by reckless extravagance and high play dissipated a handsome fortune; his wife's estate of Harefield, close to Pateley Bridge, was sold to pay his debts. He had mild literary tastes, and published a volume of poems and ballads. White Benson's sister married first a lawyer named |