Benham, William

BENHAM, WILLIAM: Church of England; b. at Westmeon (16 m. n.e. of Southampton), Hants, Jan. 15, 1831. He was educated at St. Mark's College, Chelsea, and King's College, London (Theological Associate, 1857), and was a village schoolmaster from 1849 to 1852, and a private tutor from 1853 to 1858. He was ordered deacon in 1857 and ordained priest in the following year, and after acting as tutor in St. Mark's College from 1857 to 1864, was editorial secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge from 1864 to 1867, and professor of modern history in Queen's College, London, from 1864 to 1871. He was successively curate of St. Lawrence, Jewry, London (1865–67), vicar of Addington (1867–73), St. John the Baptist, Margate (1873–80), and Marden, Kent (1880–82), as well as Six-Preacher of Canterbury Cathedral from 1872 to 1888, and Boyle Lecturer in 1897. From 1882 he was rector of St. Edmund's, Lombard Street, and was honorary canon of Canterbury from 1885. He was also rural dean of East City from 1903. In theology he was a Broad-church disciple of F. D. Maurice. Died at London July 30, 1910. His works are: The Gospel of St. Matthew, with Notes and a Commentary (London, 1862); English Ballads, with Introduction and Notes (1863); The Epistles for the Christian Year, with Notes and Commentary (1864); The Church of the Patriarchs (1867); Companion to the Lectionary (1872); A New Translation of Thomas a Kempis' "Imitatio Christi" (1874); Readings on the Life of our Lord and His Apostles (1880); How to Teach the Old Testament (1881); Annals of the Diocese of Winchester (1884); A Short History of the Episcopal Church in America (1884); The Dictionary of Religion (1887); and Old St. Paul's Cathedral (1902). He collaborated with R. P. Davidson and with C. Welsh in Mediæval London (1901); and edited the Life of Archbishop Tait (London, 1891); The Writings of St. John, in the Temple Bible (1902), and the Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature.