Edward Bentham

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

Edward Bentham was born at Ely where his father, the Rev. Samuel Bentham, was employed as a minor canon at the cathedral.^[2] The Benthams were a clerical family, and Edward was the sixth priest in a continuous descent from Thomas Bentham (1513/14–1579), Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. His younger brother, James Bentham achieved distinction as an antiquarian and historian of Ely Cathedral.^[3] The family were distant cousins of the philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832).^[4]

In 1717, on the recommendation of Dr. Smalridge, then a fellow of Christ Church college, Bentham was sent away to Oxford where he sang as a chorister at Christ Church,^[5] before entering the college as a student on 28 March 1724.^[3] He studied under the supervision of John Burton, a cousin who became also a friend.^[1] He was listed as a scholar in 1726.^[6] Sources commend Bentham's erudition and even temperament. As soon as he had taken his Bachelor of Arts degree he was invited by the principal of Magdalen Hall to become vice-principal of that college, and took up the appointment on 6 March 1730 (Gregorian), still aged only 22.^[5] However, the appointment proved short-lived, since on 23 April 1731 he was elected to the fellowship at Oriel College, where he was appointed a tutor the next year.^[5] He retained the tutorship at Oriel till 1752.^[2]

Further promotions and appointments followed. He obtained his Bachelor of Divinity degree on 26 March 1743,^[5] becoming a Doctor of Divinity in 1749.^[2] On 22 April 1743 he was allocated a Prebendary stall at Hereford Cathedral.^[5] At Oxford he was nominated as a canon at Christ Church in April 1754, the previous canon, a Dr. Newton, having died. Bentham's installation followed on 9 June 1754, and while canon he also acted as subdean and treasurer for more than another twelve years.^[5] He set in place reforms to address the "great confusion" in the "affairs of the [cathedral] treasury" which he found on taking up his appointment.^[5] (There is also mention made of the "negligence of the deputy [treasurer]".)^[5]

It was at this time, on 22 June 1754, that Edward Bentham married Elizabeth Bates (died 1790) from Alton in the nearby county of Hampshire.^[2][7]

Edward Bentham's appointment to the Oxford regius professorship of divinity took place in May^[5] or June^[2] 1763, following the death of the previous incumbent, John Fanshawe. The professorship came with an automatic entitlement to a canonry at Christ Church: unfortunately, however, the eighth^[5] prebendary chair to which this canonry entitled him was lower in the Christ Church cathedral hierarchy than the fifth^[5] prebendary chair which Bentham had up till now occupied since 1754.^[5] In this sense, it was impossible to avoid the observation that elevation to the regius professorship represented not merely an academic promotion but also a canonical demotion.^[2] In this context the Archbishop of Canterbury supplied a critique of the appointment (which he had himself recommended to the king and energetically encouraged Bentham to accept) in a letter written to the Archbishop of York on 31 May 1763: "I am sorry for poor Bentham, but I am glad for the University". It is also reported that Edward Bentham's brother, the church historian James Bentham, saw the regius professorship as a step along the way to further ecclesiastical promotion; but in the event Edward Bentham was still serving as the Oxford University regius professor of divinity when he died more than thirteen years later, in October 1776.^[2]

Bentham was an active regius professor. Encouraged by Archbishop Secker, in 1764 he instigated a yearly course of thrice weekly lectures for those intending to seek ordination into the English priesthood. The "striking innovation" in this context, according to the twentieth-century historian R.Greaves, was that Bentham did not charge any fees to students attending the lectures.^[2][8] Surviving notes by students indicate a real-world practical approach, coupled with an adherence to the lecturer's own moderate high church biblical orthodoxy.^[2]

During his lifetime Bentham was noted as an early riser who had often completed half a day's work before many others had begun their day. He enjoyed good health, but during his final years suffered a sporadic weakness in his eyes, attributed to "too free an use of them when he was young".^[5] He was incapacitated by his final illness from 23 July 1776, but battled on with his studies "like a faithful soldier, in the exercise of his religion", dying at the start of the next month.^[5]