BEN 



244 



BEN 



It has several handsome buildings, and Mount Anthony in 

 the town contains a cave, in which there are many beautiful 

 stalactites. The population of the town was 3419, in 1830. 

 {J'teir of the United Slain, 1833; Hinton's History and 

 Topography of the United Statet ; Companion to American 



BENT GRASS, a species of Agrostis, creeping and 

 rooting by it* bent and wiry stems, whence it becomes ex- 

 ceedingly difficult to eradicate from any soil of which it has 

 taken possession. 



BENTHAM, JAMES, author of the History of the 

 Church of Ely,' was born in the year 1708. He was the 

 fourth son of the Rev. Samuel Bentham, vicar of Witehford 

 near Ely, and was descended from a very anlicnt family in 

 Yorkshire, which hod produced an uninterrupted succession 

 of clergymen from the time of Queen Elizabeth. Having 

 received the rudiments of classical learning in the grammar- 

 school of Ely, he was admitted of Trinity College, Cam- 

 bridge, in 1727, and took the degree of B.A. in 1730 and 

 M.A. in 1738. His first preferment was the vicarage of 

 Stapleford in Cambridgeshire, in 1733, which he resigned 

 in 1 736, on being made a minor canon in the church of Ely. 

 In 1 767 he was presented to the vicarage of Wymondham 

 in Norfolk, which he resigned in the year following for the 

 rectory of Feltwell St. Nicholas, in the same county. ! This 

 he resigned in 1774 for the rectory of Northwold, which he 

 exchanged in 1 779 for a prebendal stall at Ely. In 1 783 

 he was presented to the rectory of Bow-brick-hill in Buck- 

 inghamshire, by the Rev. Edward Guellaume. 



From his first connexion with the church of Ely, Mr. 

 Bentham appears to have directed his attention to the study 

 of church architecture, the varieties of which, from the ear- 

 liest period to the time of the Reformation, were constantly 

 within his view. Having previously examined with great 

 attention every historical monument and authority which 

 could throw light upon his subject, and after he had circu- 

 lated, in 1 756, a catalogue of the principal members of the 

 church (abbesses, abbots, bishops, priors, deans, preben- 

 daries, and archdeacons), in order to collect further informa- 

 tion concerning them, he published ' The History and An- 

 tiquities of the Conventual and Cathedral Church of Ely 

 from the foundation of the Monastery, A.D. 675, to the year 

 1771, illustrated with copper-plates,' 4to. Cambridge, 1771 

 He received great assistance in the compilation of it from 

 his brother, Dr. Bentham, and from the Rev. William Cole 

 of Milton. By a strange mistake, his remarks on Saxon 

 Norman, and Gothic architecture were long attributed to 

 the celebrated Mr. Gray, merely because Mr. Bentham hai 

 mentioned his name among those to whom he was indebtec 

 for communications. The ' History of the Church of Ely- 

 was reprinted at Norwich in 4to. 1812, by Mr. William 

 Stevenson; who in 1817 published a ' Supplement' to the 

 first edition in the same size. 



In 1769, when the dean and chapter of Ely had deter- 

 mined upon the general repair of their church, and the 

 judicious removal of the choir from the lantern to the pres- 

 bytery at the east end, Mr. Bentham was requested to 

 superintend that concern as clerk of the works. He was 

 yet intent upon his favourite subject, and to the close of lift, 

 continued to make collections for the illustration of the 

 antient architecture of this kingdom, which, however, hi 

 various avocations prevented him from arranging. 



He also contributed to promote works of general utility 

 in his neighbourhood, and rendered great assistance in the 

 plans suggested for the improvement of the fens by drain 

 ing, and the practicability of increasing the intercourse will 

 the neighbouring counties by means of turnpike roads, a 

 measure till then unattemptecl. A letter on the discover; 

 of the bones of the original benefactors to the monastery o 

 Ely, and some Roman coins found near Littleport, printct 

 in the ' Archaoologia' of the Society of Antiquaries, vol. ii 

 p. 364 ; with one or two pamphlets on local improvements 

 in Cambridgeshire, were Mr. Bentham's other publications 

 He died at his prebendal house in the college at Ely, where 

 he had resided for the greater part of his life, on Novembei 

 17th, 1791, aged ciijhty-six. 



(See Cole's Athena Cantabrigienset, M.S. Brit. Mus. 

 TO). B. ; Nichols's Lit. Anted, vol. iii. p. 484 ; Chalmers'i 

 . Dirt. vol. iv.n. 480 ; Stevenson's Supplement to 

 ham's Ilitt. of Ely, pp. 1-20.) 



BENTHAM, JEREMY, was born at the residence o 

 his father, Mr. Jeremiah Bentham, an eminent solicitor 

 adjacent to Aldgatc Church in London, on the 15th o: 



February, 1 747-8. At eight years of age he entered \Vot- 

 minster 'School ; and at thirteen he was admitted u member 

 of Queen's College, Oxford, at both which places he is 

 said to have been distinguished. The age at which he en- 

 ered Oxford belongs more to the practice of former times 

 han that of later years. At sixteen he took his degree of 

 8.A., and at twenty that of M.A. When tint tune came 

 ur attaching his signature to the Thirty-nine Articles of 

 the Church of England, what he suffered from scrupl- 

 conscience is thus related by himself' 



' Understanding that of such signature the effect and sole 

 object was, the declaring after reflection, with solemnity 

 and upon record, that the propositions therein containe<! 

 were, in my opinion, every one of them true ; wh. 

 to me a matter of duty was, to examine them in that view, 

 in order to see whether that were really the case. The ex- 

 amination was unfortunate. In some of them, no meaning 

 at all could I find : in others no meaning but one which, in 

 my eyes, was but too plainly irreconcileable cither to n 

 or to scripture. Communicating my distress to some of my 

 fellow collegiates, I found them sharers in it. Upon inquiry, 

 it was found that among the fellows of the college there was 

 one, to whose office it belonged, among other things. \ 

 move all such scruples. We repaired to him with fear and 

 trembling. His answer was cold : and the substance of it 

 was that it was not for uninformed youths, such as we, to 

 presume to set up our private judgments against a public 

 one, formed by some of the holiest as well as best and 



wisest men that ever lived I signed : but by the 



view I found myself forced to take of the whole business, 

 such an impression was made as will never depart from me 

 but with life.' 



At Oxford, Bentham was one of the class who attended 

 the lectures of Blackstone on English law. His ' Fragment 

 on Government' shows at how early an age he began to feel 

 dissatisfied with the arguments of that writer. The fol- 

 lowing passage traces in his own words the course of his 

 opinions : 



' Perhaps a short sketch of the wanderings of a raw but 

 well-intentioned mind, in its researches after moral truth, 

 may, on this occasion, be not unuseful ; for the history of 

 one mind is the history of many. The writings of the 

 honest but prejudiced Earl of Clarendon, to whose integrity 

 nothing was wanting, and to whose wisdom little but the 

 fortune of living something later and the contagion of a 

 monkish atmosphere ; these, and other concurrent ca 

 had listed my infant affections on the side of despotism. 

 The genius of the place I dwelt in, the authority of the 

 state, the voice of the church in her solemn offices ; all 

 these taught me to call Charles a martyr, and his opponents 

 rebels. I saw innovation, where indeed innovation, but a 

 glorious innovation, was, in their efforts to withstand him. 

 I saw falsehood, where indeed falsehood was, in their dis- 

 avowals of innovation. I saw selfishness, and an obedience 

 to the call of passion, in the efforts of the oppressed to 

 rescue themselves from oppression. I saw strong counte- 

 nance lent in the sacred writings to monarchic government, 

 and none to any other ; I saw passive obedience deep 

 stamped with the seal of the Christian virtues of humility 

 and self-denial. 



' Conversing with lawyers, I found them full of the vir- 

 tues of their original contract, as a recipe of sovereign efli- 

 cacy for reconciling the accidental necessity of resistance 

 with the general duty of submission. This drug of theirs 

 they administered to me to calm my scruples, but my un- 

 practised stomach revolted against their opiate. 1 bid 

 them open to mo that page of history in which the solemni- 

 zation of this important contract was recorded. They shrunk 

 from this challenge ; nor could they, when thus pressed, do 

 otherwise than our author has done confess the whole to 

 be a fiction. This, methought, looked ill : it seemed to me 

 the acknowledgment of a bad cause, the bringing a fiction 

 to support it. " To prove fiction, indeed," said 1, " there is 

 need of fiction ; but it is the characteristic of truth to need 

 no proof but truth. Have you, then, really any such pri- 

 vilege as that of coining facts? You are (pending argu- 

 ment to no purpose. Indulge yourselves in the licence of 

 supposing that to be true which is not, and as well may you 

 suppose that proposition itself to be true which you wish to 

 prove, as that other whereby you hope to prove it." Thus 

 continued I unsatisfying and unsatisfied, till I learnt to see 

 that utility was the test and measure of all virtue, of loyalty 

 as much as any ; and that the obligation to minister to 



