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BEN 



poratment. In the following year, June 24, he was admitted 

 Archdeacon of Ely. Subsequently he was appointed Chap- 

 lain both to William III. and to Queen Anne. On the 

 4th Jan. 1701, he married Joanna, daughter of Sir John 

 Bernard of Brampton, in Huntingdonshire, a lady of amiable 

 temper and cultivated mind, with whom he lived in har- 

 mony and happiness throughout their union. 



His new situation was admirably suited to meet and gra- 

 tify the wishes of a scholar; and as a supporter and encou- 

 rager of literature, Bentley's conduct is deserving of much 

 praise. He took an active part in re-modelling and render- 

 ing useful the University press ; he gave his countenance 

 and assistance to Kuster, who undertook a new edition of 

 Suidas to be printed at that press ; he undertook his edition 

 of Horace, published afterwards in 1711; he wrote his 

 Critical Epistles to Kuster on the Plutus and Clouds of Aris- 

 tophanes, two of which, written in 1708, are published in 

 the Museum Criticum (vol. ii., see page 403, seq.), together 

 with a Letter to Barnes on the Epistles ascribed to Euripi- 

 des, dated Feb. 22 1692-3. A series of emendations, pre- 

 viously unpublished, of the same plays, will be found in the 

 Museum Criticum (vol. ii. p. 126). He also transmitted in 

 1 708 a long and valuable letter toHemsterhuis, devoted prin- 

 cipally to the correction of the fragments of comic authors 

 in the 1 Oth book of Julius Pollux, of whose Onomaslicon 

 that eminent critic had recently published an edition. He 

 made an important improvement in the system of college 

 examinations for fellowships and scholarships, by substituting 

 for the old and loose method of oral examination, that system 

 of written exercises which is still pursued, and which has 

 contributed perhaps as much as any one cause, to the high 

 reputation which the college has long maintained for purity 

 of election as well as for the talents of its members ; and he 

 laboured with success for the improvement of the college 

 library. Bentley's conduct in other collegiate affairs was 

 far from praiseworthy. He showed almost from the first 

 a domineering, arbitrary, and selfish, almost a sordid temper, 

 which disgusted the best members of the society, and, in 

 the end, involved him in a protracted lawsuit, much obloquy, 

 and much uneasiness. Many of his regulations were bene- 

 ficial, but even in these he contrived to put himself in the 

 wrong, by stretching his power beyond the limits to which 

 the statutes of Trinity have strictly and sedulously confined 

 the Master's authority. Among these we may particularly 

 mention his lavish expenditure on the improvement of the 

 lodge, or master's dwelling-house ; an arbitrary appropria- 

 tion of the college revenue to a purpose which, if not un- 

 desirable, was at least not necessary, which caused great 

 discontent in the society. So also the repairing, or we might 

 almost say the rebuilding, of the present noble chapel of the 

 college, a measure most praiseworthy in itself, became offen- 

 sive and injurious to the fellows from the manner in which 

 it was done. The same censure is due to many of the 

 Master's fiscal and other regulations. 



The fellows seem soon to have made up their minds that 

 their new Master (who was likely to be unfavourably re- 

 garded from his being educated not in their own body, but 

 at St. John s) was a grasping arbitrary man ; and the 

 bickerings between him and the senior fellows of the col- 

 lege grew frequent. The most objectionable of his acts 

 appears to have been that of intruding fellows into the 

 body, not by the regular and statutable course of election, 

 but by what he termed presumption, by which candidates 

 were chosen to future vacancies ; and as the mode was 

 unjustifiable, so his choice of persons to benefit by it was 

 bad. Towards the close of 1709 an open rupture took place 

 between the Master and the seniors. The former is said, 

 in a fit of passion, to have used the words ' From henceforth 

 farewell peace to Trinity College ;' and they were verified 

 by a 1 nig series of ruinous litigation, by which the college 

 suffered grievously in purse, discipline, and reputation. 

 The seniors appealed against the Master to the visitor. 

 Unfortunately a doubt existed whether the Bishop of Ely or 

 the crown was the visitor ; and Bentley, supported by a party 

 among the junior fellows whom he had gained over to his 

 interest, succeeded, by every artifice which legal ingenuity 

 and indomitable pride and obstinacy could suggest, in de- 

 laying the decision of this question till 1733, when the 

 House of Lords finally decided that the bishop was visitor. 

 Bishop Greene immediately summoned Bentley to appear 

 before him, and in 1734 pronounced sentence of depriva- 

 tion against him. But Bentley's obstinacy and fertility of 

 expedients supported him even in this extremity. Availing 



himself of what appears to be a blunder in transcribing the 

 statutes, where it is said that the Master, after sentence of 

 deprivation by the visitor, shall be deposed per eundem vice- 

 magistrum (by the same vioemaster, where the abbreviated 

 form (vicem.) of the word vicemagiitrum seems, by a 

 blunder of the copyist, to have been changed into visita- 

 torem), he refused to vacate his office until the vice- 

 master had carried the sentence of the visitor into effect 

 which, as the vicemaster was one of his most devoted followers, 

 was equivalent to annulling the visitor's decision. He thus 

 resisted, for four years, the utmost efforts of his adversaries to 

 procure execution of the sentence, until the death of Bishop 

 Greene, in May 1738, put an end to the suit. We have 

 not attempted to give even an abstract of these proceedings, 

 for an abstract could not well be made intelligible. To those 

 who have leisure for such by-gone points of curious dis- 

 cussion, Dr. Monk's minute account of the whole suit will 

 be full of interesting information. 



In 1717, Bentley, by one of his bold and unscrupulous 

 manoeuvres, procured himself to be elected Regius Profes- 

 sor of Divinity. He chose for the subject of his proba- 

 tionary lecture a discussion of the celebrated text 1 St. 

 John, v. 7, on the three heavenly Witnesses, in which, main- 

 taining the doctrine of the Trinity, he gave a history of the 

 verse, which he decidedly rejected. This work has never been 

 printed, and Dr. Monk has not been able to discover it. It 

 was seen and read in MS. by Person and some other scholars 

 of that day. Not content with being at variance with the col- 

 lege, he placed himself in the same position with respect to 

 the whole university, in the very firs year of office, by an 

 attempt to extort from those persons who were to be created 

 doctors of divinity a larger fee than it had been usual to pay. 

 The claim, in Dr. Monk's opinion, was not undeserving of con- 

 sideration ; but, like most of Bentley's actions, it was prose- 

 cuted in a violent and offensive manner, and a warm dispute 

 arose out of this paltry beginning; in the course of which 

 the Master of Trinity and Regius Professor of Divinity, 

 one of the first dignitaries of the university, was, by a grace 

 of the senate, passed by a majority of more than two to one, 

 degraded and deprived of all his degrees, Oct. 17, 1718. 

 Against this sentence Bentley petitioned the king. The 

 matter was referred to the Privy Council, and carried thence 

 into the Court of King's Bench, which, after more than ftVe 

 years of undignified altercation, issued a mandamus, Ftu. 7, 

 to the university to restore Richard Bentley to all his de- 

 grees, and to every other right and privilege of which they 

 had deprived him. 



It shows in a strong light the remarkable activity and 

 energy of Bentley's mind, that these harassing quarrels, 

 which must have occupied a large portion of his time and 

 attention, interfered so little with his critical pursuits. 

 Some of his works, performed during this long period 

 of disturbance, we have already noticed ; we have to add 

 a large and valuable body of notes and corrections of 

 Cicero's Tusculan Questions, published in Davis's edition 

 of that work in 1709 (Richardi Bentleii Emendations^ in 

 Ciceronis Tusculanas). In 1710 he wrote his Emenda- 

 tions on the comic poets, Menander and Philemon, sug- 

 gested by Le Clerc's edition of the fragments of those 

 authors. The task was one for which Le Clerc was utterly 

 unfit : and it is said that motives of personal hostility had 

 some influence in inducing Bentley to demonstrate that he 

 was so, which he did with no sparing hand. The work was 

 anonymously printed in Holland (Emendationes in Menan- 

 dri et Philemonis Reliquias, ex nupera editione Joannit 

 Clerici ; ubi mulia Grotii et aliorum, plurima vero Clerici, 

 errata castigantur), under the signature of Phileleutherus 

 Lipsiensis : but Bentley was universally known to be the 

 author. Under the same name he again appeared in 1713, 

 as a defender of revealed religion (Remarks on the Dis- 

 course of Free-thinking) in his reply to Anthony Collins's 

 Defence of Free-thinking. His answer to the sophistry 

 and fallacies pervading that book was judicious and effect- 

 ive ; and for the eminent service done to the church and 

 clergy of England by refuting the objections and exposing 

 the ignorance,' to use the words of the University Grace, of 

 the writers calling themselves Free-thinkers, Bentley re- 

 ceived the thanks of the University of Cambridge by a vote 

 of the Senate, Jan. 4, 1 71 5. He also did no small service to 

 science, by effecting the publication of a new and imp-roved 

 edition of Newton's Princijiia, which was intrusted, in 

 1 709, by the venerable author to the management of the 

 eminent mathematician, Roger Cotes. It appears also from 



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