The Avarice and Ambition of William Benson’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol
Anna Eavis, ‘The avarice and ambition of William Benson’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xII, 2002, pp. 8–37
text © the authors 2002 THE AVARICE AND AMBITION OF WILLIAM BENSON
ANNA EAVIS
n his own lifetime William Benson’s moment of probably motivated by his desire to build a neo- Ifame came in January , as the subject of an Palladian parliament house. anonymous pamphlet: That Benson had any direct impact on the spread of neo-Palladian ideas other than his patronage of I do therefore with much contrition bewail my making Campbell through the Board of Works is, however, of contracts with deceitfulness of heart … my pride, unlikely. Howard Colvin’s comprehensive and my arrogance, my avarice and my ambition have been my downfall .. excoriating account of Benson’s surveyorship shows only too clearly that his pre-occupations were To us, however, he is also famous for building a financial and self-motivated, rather than aesthetic. precociously neo-Palladian house in , as well He did not publish on architecture, neo-Palladian or as infamous for his corrupt, incompetent and otherwise and, with the exception of Wilbury, consequently brief tenure as Surveyor-General of the appears to have left no significant buildings, either in King’s Works, which ended in his dismissal for a private or official capacity. This absence of a context deception of King and Government. Wilbury, whose for Wilbury makes the house even more startling; it elevation was claimed to be both Jonesian and appears to spring from nowhere and, as far as designed by Benson, and whose plan was based on Benson’s architectural output is concerned, to lead that of the Villa Poiana, is notable for apparently nowhere. In fact, Benson did build other houses for anticipating the neo-Palladian revival of the s. himself, but none of them survive. Despite the limited Even if one accepts Giles Worsley’s compelling survival of relevant documentation, it is possible to argument for a fluidity of ‘baroque’ and ‘neo- reconstruct them, if rather sketchily. In doing so the Palladian’ architectural styles in the late seventeenth relationship between Benson’s material and cultural and early eighteenth centuries, Wilbury, in its concerns becomes a little clearer. adaptation of earlier models, does appear Benson was born in , the eldest of children paradoxically to be looking forwards. Whether or not (Fig. ), and grew up in Bromley St Leonard, Essex, Benson was the architect, it might be supposed that at that time a village within reach of the City of he was an early champion of neo-Palladianism. At the London. His merchant father, Sir William Benson, Board of Works, his replacement of Hawksmoor with purchased the manorial rights in , acquiring a the self-proclaimed proto-Palladian Colen Campbell parcel of land that included the manor house. Benson suggests that he may have been a man with a mission. inherited the manor on the death of his father in His mad pretence that the House of Lords was on the . The estate as described in included verge of collapse, which extended to shoring it up Bromley House and gardens ‘with the Wilderness, with scaffolding and going to the lengths of Fish Ponds and Paddock, all walled in’. In addition evacuating the Lords to Westminster Hall, was were several houses and fields, a limekiln, a fishery
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Fig . The family of William Benson
and an ozier ground. It is shown on John Rocque’s church, the manor house may have been built on the map of (Fig. ). The manor of Bromley St site of the west cloister range. Leonards originated as a Benedictine nunnery and A sketch plan of Bromley House is shown on Lee the topography of the Benson estate, its proximity to and Gascoyne’s Survey of Bethnal Green in the the river Lea, its rabbit warrens and fishponds, Parish of Stepney (Fig. ). Built during the s, it refreshed at every tide by means of a sluice from the was ‘a large brick edifice’, notable for its ‘imposing river, must derive in part from the conventual elevation, the number of its lofty and spacious complex. The brick boundary wall was judged by the apartments, the grandeur of its wide spiral staircase late eighteenth-century writer Daniel Lysons to be and its almost unlimited prospect over the Counties partly medieval and it probably described the of Essex, Kent, Middlesex and Surrey, with the boundaries of the monastic precinct. The only majestic Thames flowing between’. Surviving medieval building known to survive intact was St illustrations of the house show it to have combined, Mary’s, the convent chapel which became the parish in common with other gentry houses of this period, church and retained elements of its twelfth-century traditional and modern features (Figs and ). fabric until it was destroyed during the Second It conformed to an H plan, but its roof was hipped World War. Given its position in relation to the rather than gabled, and the regular fenestration
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Fig . William Benson’s Bromley estate (from John Rocque, Exact Survey of the City’s of London, Westminster ... and the Country near Ten Miles Round, ). Guildhall Library
Fig . Bromley House (from William Lee & Joel Gascoyne, Survey of Bethnal Green in the Parish of Stepney, ). Guildhall Library suggests that the old-fashioned hall and chamber elevated above the river Lea, also had a large water arrangement had been rejected for a more cistern incorporated into the uppermost terrace of its symmetrical disposition of rooms. The ground floor formal gardens, and could be reached through a at Bromley House was raised over a basement range doorway and passage in the brick supporting wall of that presumably contained the service the upper garden. Its precise function is not known, accommodation. The house also incorporated but Dunstan’s description of its ‘good supply of classical features in its porch, which had rusticated excellent water’ suggests that it provided the piers and a broken pediment, and in its loggia, household with water for domestic use. If so, it was reminiscent of the monastic cloister, opening onto an unusual provision and is of interest in relation to the formal garden to the east. That the staircase was Benson’s hydraulic engineering interests at recorded as a principal feature suggests a large stair Amesbury and Shaftesbury. hall. Visitors’ memories of fine views over the Benson’s father is said to have altered the house, surrounding countryside indicate that the public perhaps adding the porch, which bore his arms. He rooms may have been placed on the upper floor. also extended the chancel of the parish church, for There may even have been a gallery above the loggia, which he held the freehold, adding a projection at as at Holland House, Kensington. The house, the east end of about ten feet square to house new
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Fig . The west front of Bromley House in , showing Sir William Benson’s porch. Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives
Fig . The east front of Bromley House in , showing the loggia and St Mary’s Church with Sir William Benson’s rebuilt east end. Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XII THE AVARICE AND AMBITION OF WILLIAM BENSON altar tablets inscribed with the Commandments and Benson and Eleanor Earle. Joseph Earle settled on a painted figure of Moses. He glazed the new east the couple an estate in North Stoke, Somerset, along window with his own coat of arms, alongside those of with £ , , Eleanor’s mother’s jewels and the his wife, England, the City of London and the promise of £ , at his death. Sir William Drapers’ Company. Beneath this projecting recess he undertook to invest £ , in land and to leave his built a burial vault, in which he and his children were son £ , at his death. The landed estates were to subsequently interred. A doorway in the east wall be managed by four trustees, including Henry Hoare allowed members of the Benson family to enter the and Joseph Earle’s brother Robert, who were to vault directly from their own land without passing preserve them for the use of ‘the first and every other through the church. Another doorway, knocked son and sons of William Benson’ by Eleanor. through the medieval sedilia, gave the Bensons After the marriage, which took place ‘soon access to the chancel. That Sir William afterwards’, Sir William conveyed one half of the demonstrated his seignorial rights over the manor by manor of Poplar and Bromley to the trustees. In transforming the east end of the church is he bought, for £ , and ‘at the desire of Joseph unsurprising. He was a merchant. His wife Martha Earle and William Benson … the capital messuage was the daughter of a jeweller. To all intents and and lands of and in Newton Toney’. Before he died purposes a self-made man, who had purchased rather he bought a fee farm in the manor of Poplar and than inherited the position, he was bound to claim Bromley. In and he was selling off his the significance of his own family. stocks of iron and malt. By the estate income Although enjoying the rights deriving from the derived principally from rents, the capital now lordship of a rural manor, Sir William’s real milieu administered by the trustees being used to buy and was the City and the continental connections maintain property. In , with the purchase of afforded by trade. A stalwart of the Drapers’ further freehold lands in Newton Toney and in Company and a sheriff of the City of London, his Amport, the trustees agreed that Sir William’s circle included the goldsmith banker Henry Hoare promise to expend £ , was now fulfilled. and the Treasury Solicitor Anthony Cracherode. His The marriage was a turning point for Benson, sons Benjamin and Henry were apprenticed to establishing him as a significant landowner and merchants in Holland, while his youngest son, binding him to a family that enjoyed political, as well Septimus, spent several months in Paris before as mercantile, credibility. Joseph Earle, Benson’s beginning his training as a lawyer. Whether William father-in-law, was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Earle, Benson was also sent overseas to serve a mercantile who had traded successfully in New England from apprenticeship is not known, but he certainly , and was both Mayor of and MP for Bristol in travelled in Germany and Sweden during his . Joseph, who took over the family business, was twenties. Sir William’s wealth came principally Whig MP for Bristol from until and owned from the sale of iron, which he probably imported the Little Park estate in Bristol, which he from Sweden, and of malt. Between and his developed. His brother Giles was an MP for death in , however, he set in train a plan to Chippenham from until and thence until change his investments, switching from the for Malmesbury. From until he also, fluctuating nature of trade to the more reliable through his close acquaintance with the Duke of prospects offered by land. On October , he and Argyll, had the confidence of the Prince of Wales. Joseph Earle, a rich Bristol merchant, agreed the The parliamentary success of his in-laws may have terms of a marriage settlement for their heirs William encouraged Benson’s own political aspirations.
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High Sheriff for Wiltshire in , Benson stood for he had to look elsewhere. In , Nicholas parliament at both Minehead and Shaftesbury in Hawksmoor reported that: before winning the Shaftesbury seat in . His William B – n Esqr. In extream Need of an success in Shaftesbury was undoubtedly assisted by employment could find nothing at that time, but ye his scheme, first introduced in around , to Office of Workes to fall upon, soe disguising himself supply the town with piped water from Wincombe under the pretence of an Architect got himself made Park, a Wiltshire estate with two large natural ponds Surveyour Generall and also power (assisted by ye on a hilltop just north of Shaftesbury. The water worthy gentleman last mentioned) to Destroy the Settlement of ye Office, to Turn out Sr Chrisr. Wren. was raised by a horse-engine at Wincombe Farm and conveyed into a large reservoir in the High Street. The ‘worthy gentleman’ was ‘Mr Ayslaby, being The maintenance costs were such that the project Chancellor of ye Exchqr’. Benson had powerful was abandoned three or four years later. In about allies in Lord Sunderland, the new First Lord of the , the year before Benson stood successfully for Treasury and John Aislabie, the new Chancellor. parliament in Shaftesbury, he restored the system and Aislabie was to remain a close friend; Benson even again supplied the town with water, distributing it to named his youngest son after him. Most all quarters of the town through lead pipes, although significantly, Benson also managed to win over the according to one account ‘in Summer it was seldom new king, perhaps with the assistance of the or never fit for nice uses, as for coffee and tea.’ advantageously connected Giles Earle. Benson’s The most remarkable fact about Benson’s construction, for George I, of a spectacular fountain parliamentary career was that within a few years of at Herrenhausen, the King’s palace in Hanover, was being elected he had managed to oust Sir perhaps the single act that got him the surveyorship. Christopher Wren from the post of Surveyor General This creation is still attributed to Benson, but the ‘to the amazement’, as another MP put it, ‘of credit should have gone to the Reverend Thomas everyone and the whole world besides’. The Holland, an overly modest Amesbury curate with an Surveyorship was given to Benson to keep him aptitude for hydraulics, from whom Benson pinched happy until the lucrative position he really wanted – the idea and the mechanic needed to put it into one of the two Auditors of the Imprests – became practice. Holland had devised a way of creating a free. In Benson had managed to secure water-jet up to feet high using a chain pump. He reversionary rights to the auditorship for himself and provided such fountains at Wanstead for Lord Tilney for Edward Wortley Montagu. According to Joseph and at Wilton for the Earl of Pembroke. Benson Addison, writing to Wortley Montagu at the time: passed off the invention as his own:
Mr Benson, being convinced that forms of law would He made his late Majesty, and all the gentlemen and in their ordinary course be very tedious … in the affair ladies that came with the King from Hanover, believe of the auditors, has procured the grant of a reversion this performance to be his, and talked himself into the for those places to you and himself, after which if an place of being Surveyor to the Board of Works … this ejectment ensues, you are in immediate possession. gentleman prevailed his Majesty to let him erect one of This ejectment he believes, may be soon brought these engines at his gardens at Herrnhausen, which about by law, unless a voluntary surrender make such a now performs very well, having for power the force of a proceeding unnecessary…. [this] affair being whole river. But Mr Holland had neither the credit of transacted by my Lord Sunderland. this machine nor any profit of it, though his Majesty paid three times as much as was agreed for. The auditorships were held for life and as the ‘ejectment’ hoped for by Benson did not take place Benson must have encountered Thomas Holland in
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Amesbury, having taken a -year lease on Amesbury gate house appears on Flitcroft’s survey, but a gate is House in February . The house was built by shown near Kent House, at the easternmost corner of John Webb, reputedly to the designs of Inigo Jones, the estate. The gate piers, which survive today, are and owned by Lord Bruce. The lease allowed stylistically compatible with the dates of Benson’s Benson to make improvements to the estate. These tenure (Fig. ). They are about feet high, semi- included replacing ‘the old gate house’ with ‘a rusticated and surmounted by cornices topped with handsome and convenient gate’; demolishing ‘the square bases and stone balls. If, as appears likely, two old summer houses now standing upon the Benson built them, his contribution to the Amesbury garden walls’ and repairing the walls; pulling down site was significant, changing the orientation of the the old kitchen, bakehouse and outbuildings, and re- estate by moving the main entrance from its earlier using the materials to ‘set up in a convenient place position near the George Inn. The new entrance near (the house) … a new convenient and substantial allowed access from the London Road without kitchen, scullery and bakehouse’. The lease also travelling through the centre of the town. Indeed, the provided for Benson to build ‘in some convenient avenue shown to the east of the gates was clearly part of the... lands’ a lead cistern ‘and bring water planted for this purpose. into the same’ in order to supply the house and Although the extent of his work at Amesbury outbuildings at Amesbury. The lead was to be taken cannot be established with certainty, the lease is from ‘the old fountaine in the Garden’, which was to nonetheless instructive, revealing that Benson’s plans be stopped up, and any other lead or iron which for living in an old house were contingent on his Benson could find on the premises. having licence to modernize it, improving both the The absence of any further documentation service and access facilities and the appearance of its relating to Benson’s tenure and the extensive most public aspects, the gate and estate walls. It building works of subsequent owners make it suggests too that Benson may have intended to live difficult to determine whether he carried out these there for longer than he did, the purchase of the improvements. The survival of two seventeenth- nearby Newton Toney estate in and the century lodges, Diana’s House and Kent House, subsequent construction of Wilbury being at this suggests that he did not get as far as demolishing the stage unanticipated. In showing that Benson had two summer houses. However, Henry Flitcroft’s licence to dismantle buildings on the estate, the lease survey of the estate, undertaken in for its new supports John Bold’s suggestion that Benson could owners the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, have been using material from Amesbury for his probably gives a reasonable indication of Benson’s garden buildings at Wilbury. It could also shed activities at Amesbury, including some of the planting light on other activities at the new house, particularly (Fig. ). Flitcroft’s survey shows an orderly Benson’s readiness to re-use existing materials and to arrangement of ancillary buildings located close to provide adequate and convenient service the main house, suggesting that Benson may indeed accommodation. have rebuilt the kitchen, scullery and bakehouse ‘in a Benson was living at Amesbury when he built convenient place near the house’, as required. Wilbury House on his new estate at nearby Newton The location and date of ‘the old gate house’ is Toney. The design was based on the earlier house, uncertain, but in the early seventeenth century there with neo-Palladian details. It is likely that the idea was a gate house near the George Inn. It may even of using Amesbury as the primary source for the have been the medieval ‘gate with the gate house in design was Benson’s. It is not hard to imagine what the base court’, saved from demolition in . No sort of an impact Webb’s house must have made on
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Fig . Henry Flitcroft, survey of Amesbury, . Wiltshire Record Office
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feet high by feet wide – by far the largest and most ostentatious in the church and cost Benson the considerable sum of £ . That Benson occupied Bromley House after his father’s death, however, is unlikely. He appears to have made efforts to establish his family in Wiltshire. His second son, born in , was baptized at Amesbury. All of his younger children were baptized in the church at Newton Toney and most of them chose to be buried there, as did his wife Eleanor, which suggests an affiliation to the place. And as late as Benson was styling himself ‘William Benson of Wilberry Park’. It is possible that, during his Surveyorship, he retired to a house at weekends within a few hours drive of London. In a letter to Lady Sundon, in which he discusses a staircase to be painted for her by James Thornhill, he writes on a Sunday morning from ‘South Lodge’ and talks of ‘being obliged to return to town this evening’. By the mid- s he did have a villa of sorts, but it was not in Wiltshire. In Benson’s brother Benjamin bought Brownsea Island, in Poole Harbour. He conveyed it to William Benson in , who converted the Fig . Gate piers near Kent House, Amesbury. Anna Eavis sixteenth-century blockhouse on the island into a house for himself. The local citizens were enraged and the Corporation of Poole petitioned the king in protest, arguing that the ‘castle’ and its garrison of six him. By comparison with Bromley House, men had, since Henry VIII’s time, protected the Amesbury, although already about years old, must town from: have seemed radically forward-looking. And at this time Amesbury was believed to be by Inigo Jones, the insults of our enemies and more especially from the ravages … committed by privateers which are … which gave it added kudos. Wilbury has been continually lurking up and down and infesting our described as a villa or occasional residence, the coast, and have even attempted to take ship within our assumption being that Benson’s principal house was havens, which they would have often effected, had they elsewhere. It is true that Benson retained Bromley not been beaten off by cannon from that castle … But House and, for a time, maintained the Benson now … WB Esq, having lately bought the said island of Brownsea, has set up a title to the said castle, it connection with the parish. In he commissioned being situate on his island, and the same castle … has from the Essex sculptor Thomas Stayner a vast actually spoiled or converted to a dwelling house. monument for the church at Bromley (Fig. ). Of veined white marble, it was dedicated to his parents, The crux of the issue was whether the castle but it also bore the names of the entire Benson family, belonged to the Corporation of Poole or to the owner including those still living. The monument was – at of the island. In Benson’s mind there was no doubt.
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Fig . Thomas Stayner, monument to Sir William Benson and his wife Martha, erected . Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives
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Fig . Isaac Taylor, south-east view of Brownsea Castle and Island, . English Heritage (NMR)
He argued that the Government never owned the The Corporation managed to assemble a number of Castle, and that any use of it by the Crown or ancient witnesses, who testified to the history of the Corporation of Poole was only by the permission of castle but in the end, Benson seems to have the proprietor. The case rumbled on and was pursuaded the Attorney General to abandon the referred to the Attorney General in , at which case. time Robert Crosby, solicitor for Poole warned the It is difficult to ascertain exactly what sort of Corporation: house Benson built. No contemporary drawings of it I have left all the papers with the Attorney General for are known to survive and rebuilding by subsequent Mr Benson to take coppies against next meeting. I have owners has obliterated evidence of Benson’s sent you an abstract of all the papers if you have any tenure. Sir Humphrey Sturt, the owner from , more pray send them to me especially originals – when is credited with having transformed the castle and and by whom the Castle was erected. Mr Benson took cultivated the island. It was claimed that when he notice you suggested the Castle was built in Henry purchased the island it had ths time which I believe you was mistaken in. Mr Benson goes into the Country in a day or two to an Old House only, which was in a very ruinous state examine witnesses about this afair for affidavits to lay and being of little or no value, and without Gardens, before the attorney so I think it advisable for you to get since when Mr Sturt built a very excellent Castle more affidavits to support your position. thereon, with suitable offices … besides laying out
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Gardens and building Hothouses therein … Mr Sturt estates. His brother Benjamin, a stone merchant and also built a malthouse, brew house, stables and he also his right hand man at the Office of Works, who planted a large tract of ground. bought the island first, may have hoped to capitalise This account, from a certificate of improvements on stone or mineral extraction. Copperas made by Sturt, may be misleading in its implication manufacture, for example, was flourishing when that little significant work was carried out before Celia Fiennes visited the island in the s, but had . Benson entertained Frederick, Prince of Wales petered out by . When Benson acquired it at his house there in , which in itself suggests a from him he seems to have done so with the express building of note. He sold it before , when a purpose of building a house, which he started Southwark gentleman, Thomas Chamberlain, immediately. This was notable because – as the conveyed it to John Lock, a mariner from Portsea. citizens of Poole pointed out – no previous owner of The deed of sale lists the castle, two tenements, a the island had ever contemplated living there. barn, a stable, a turfhouse and a blacksmith’s shop. According to Hutchins, Benson ‘sometimes resided It is possible that Lock neglected matters to such a [at Brownsea] for his diversion’ and it is degree that Sturt was indeed faced, twenty years undoubtedly the case that he bought it as an later, with little more than a ruined house. John occasional residence. He may simply have conceived Hutchins, who visited the island before and during of the house as a bathing lodge. He owned two Sturt’s ownership of the island, noted that of editions of Flayer and Barnard’s History of Cold Benson’s castle all that survived was ‘an house, in Bathing , a book first published in , which which is a tolerable large room’. He also suggested advocated the therapeutic properties of cold bathing that Sturt did not have to start entirely from scratch, as practised by the Ancients. The existence of a but instead ‘made great additions to the castle, ‘great hall’, however, suggests something a little more preserving the great hall built by Auditor Benson’. ambitious. He owned a copy of Descriptions des Charles Van Raalte, a later owner of the castle, stated Maisons de Pline and, while not achieving anything that Sturt preserved not only Benson’s ‘great hall’ but on this scale, perhaps wished to develop Brownsea, also the ‘ancient staircases and carvings’. The ‘great with its stunning scenery, as a maritime villa like hall’ may have been the saloon ‘ ft square, and the Pliny’s at Laurentum. There may be a further same in height’ described in , comparable in dimension. Brownsea was then – and still is – proportion to the south hall at Wilbury. The remarkable for its flora and fauna. This must have earliest known drawing is by Isaac Taylor and was appealed to Benson, who owned many books on made during the ownership of Sir Humphrey Sturt natural history. He is said to have paid a botanist (Fig. ). Although it is not possible to distinguish £ ‘to collect all the curious plants in the island, to Benson’s work from Sturt’s with certainty, the means the number of several hundreds, which were pasted by which the block-house was adapted as a castle are up in the hall.’ This display was the showpiece of the clearly visible. Hutchins’s description of Benson’s house. ‘house with a large room’ suggests that Benson Benson’s library, which at the time of his death simply converted the square, single-storey building, comprised about books, shows him to have its walls ft thick and ft long, into a lodge with a been a keen Latinist with a particular devotion to rusticated entrance, a ‘cube’ saloon and some small Virgil, owning over editions of, or commentaries upper rooms. on, the poet’s works. In , the year after he It is worth considering why Benson bought the began building at Brownsea, Benson published his island, at a remove from the rest of his country own translation of parts of Virgil’s Georgics . In it he
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XII THE AVARICE AND AMBITION OF WILLIAM BENSON advocated Virgilian methods of cultivation, including with an affirming introduction by the young Joseph the importation of plants recommended by Virgil, a Addison. Benson used the occasion of his own practice that he himself carried out. He refers to a publication to pour scorn on Dryden’s work. His type of grass which he imported from Persia and to edition presented on each page the Latin version, the difficulty of obtaining cytisus (a plant celebrated sandwiched between his own translation and as cattle feed by Virgil) from anywhere other than a Dryden’s version, and was amply referenced with garden in Naples. In his view that Virgil’s methods self-justifying footnotes. His principal criticism was should be adapted for modern use Benson was of what he perceived to be Dryden’s inadequate perfectly in accord with the thinking of Richard grasp of the principles and practice of husbandry. He Bradley, the first professor of Botany at Cambridge devoted much space to correcting Dryden’s University. In , the year of Benson’s interpretation of agricultural details and claimed, in publication, Richard Bradley published his Survey of his introduction, that much English farming was Ancient Gardening & Husbandry . This was based on Virgilian husbandry: primarily an evaluation of the writings of Cato, Varro, In those parts of England which the Romans Virgil and other classical writers with suggestions for principally inhabited all along the Southern Coast, using ancient methods in contemporary husbandry. Latin words remain to this hour among shepherds, and Bradley too noted the usefulness of cytisus and ploughmen in their rustic affairs … there is more of advocated its development in England. He also Virgil’s Husbandry put in England at this instant than in Italy itself. revealed plans to set up a botanic garden in Cambridge. Bradley made a persuasive case for the Benson’s claims were taken seriously enough by identification and cultivation of rare plants, along the agronomists for Jethro Tull to have to deny them in lines of Dutch botanic gardens, including the import . Stephen Switzer came immediately to of exotic specimens. His plans for a research area, Benson’s defence, devoting the editorial of his where exotic plants of economic importance could August issue of The Husbandman to repudiating be studied, cultivated and propagated to start new Tull’s anti-Virgilian stance. Benson’s participation in agricultural enterprises in other parts of the world this debate and his detailed comments about may well have appealed to Benson, and Brownsea methods, supported by one of the leading writers of would have been the perfect location to experiment the day, suggests that he had more than a passing in this way. According to Van Raalte, Benson ‘brought acquaintance with the subject. More significantly, it the island into a more advanced state of cultivation gives a telling glimpse of how he viewed the farming … and he lavishly planted it with various kinds of of his lands in Wiltshire and Hampshire. Given the trees’. It was more recently claimed that Benson tone of his writing, it is not far fetched to suppose ‘planted more than , saplings, to the benefit of that Benson perceived himself as embodying and the existing great and lesser spotted woodpeckers practising classical virtues and principles. that welcome the rotting boles of his trees’. Benson had another, more conventional, kind of Unfortunately neither of these assertions were occasional residence in the house he built in supported by any evidence, and Hutchins reported Grosvenor Street, one of the earliest streets to be laid that it was Sturt who began planting trees on the out as part of the Grosvenor family’s development of island. Benson’s use of the saloon as a cabinetto of their Mayfair lands in the s. In he and his botanical specimens, however, is compelling. brother Benjamin took assignment of a building Virgil’s Georgics were translated into English for agreement for ft of frontage on the south side of the first time in by John Dryden and published Grosvenor Street. Their plot extended from
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Grosvenor Street to Mount Street. In it the brothers passage, however, which must have given onto the built two narrow houses, each only ft wide. staircase, was a mahogany table, a table clock and a Whereas Benjamin let his house from time to time, pair of painted floor cloths. The dining room and Benson retained his for his own occupation until drawing room were on the first floor. The dining , the year before his death. After this it was room, large enough to seat six people for dinner, was occupied by his youngest son John Aislabie Benson furnished with a mahogany oval dining table and and finally by his grand-daughter and sole surviving mahogany chairs upholstered in brass-nailed black heir Elizabeth. After her death in around the leather. There was a large mirror in a gilt frame and a two houses were knocked into one. The house was walnut desk, bookcase and chamber table. The floor rebuilt by Detmar Blow in . was covered with a painted cloth. The drawing room No drawings of Benson’s house survive, so in the had yellow silk curtains, yellow-upholstered walnut Survey of London ’s excellent volume on the chairs, a mahogany pillar and claw table and – for Grosvenor Estate it is one of the few buildings not more comfort than the dining room – a Turkey illustrated. Houses built on Grosvenor Street varied carpet. Benson’s bedroom, hung with yellow considerably in size, with frontages ranging from harrateen, was at the front of the house on the second to feet. Benson’s, therefore, was one of the floor. His wife’s, at the back of the house, was hung narrowest. Although, for obvious reasons, a unified with green serge. On the top floor were two garret design for the entire street was not attempted, a bedrooms, probably used by servants. Certainly, by degree of architectural homogenity was achieved. , when a fire seriously damaged the upper part of Most houses had three main storeys and a garret with the house, ‘the servants were the greatest sufferers, a brick facade, segmental-headed windows and a flat their property being all in the attic storey and none doorcase with projecting hood. The inventory saved’. Comparison with other Grosvenor Estate taken at Benson’s death in describes a -storey plans suggests that while the kitchen and wash-house house with garret. Although one storey higher, the may have formed a one-storey block at the back of house may have looked a little like the one that the house, the remaining ancillary accommodation Benson’s friend Colen Campbell built for himself on was probably located at the far end of a yard or nearby Brook Street. Campbell’s house was only ft garden. Benson had inconvenienced his neighbours wide and was one of a pair that he built on a double by refusing to give up any part of his plot for a public plot at around the same time as the Benson brothers, stable yard. His own stable was two-storeyed, with in (Fig. ). a bedroom on the upper floor. During the fire, The Survey of London has shown how internal much of his grand-daughter Elizabeth Benson’s arrangements varied from house to house. The ‘valuable furniture was preserved and conveyed narrowness of Benson’s house limited the flexibility through the gardens into the stables’. of the plan, which must have been one of the simplest Although he always maintained a principal on the estate, probably comparable to that of residence elsewhere, the Grosvenor Street town Upper Brook Street, a ft wide house built in house was useful to Benson for the rest of his life and (Fig. ). The inventory indicates that there it was subsequently adapted for the bachelor were two principal rooms on each storey, one to the existences of his son and grand-daughter. It was also front and one to the rear of the building, with only up-market. The westward development of London one staircase. The ground floor rooms appear, from by and for the upper classes during the eighteenth the wainscot and deal furniture they contained, to century has been well documented. In have been for private, rather than public use. In the Grosvenor Street was described as ‘a spacious well
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Fig . Colen Campbell’s built street, inhabited chiefly by People of house, no. , Brook Distinction’. Benson, in abandoning his east Street, London, built to London address and acquiring a west London one, his own design. was acting according to his class and social Campbell’s house had two storeys and a garret; aspirations. The village he left behind, Bromley St the two top storeys were Leonards, went into decline at about this time. By the added in – by s Bromley House could no longer be sustained as Thomas Cundy. Crown a family home and was being used as a school. It was copyright (NMR). demolished in the early years of the nineteenth century and by the site of the fishponds were covered with factories ‘and the gardens by rows of small houses’. Brownsea and Grosvenor Street were both investments that Benson made independently of his marriage settlement. As such they were his to dispose of as he chose. Bromley and Wilbury, on the other hand, were to devolve, along with the estates in North Stoke and Amport, to his eldest son Earle and thence to Earle’s heirs. Benson’s wife Eleanor died in , and within six months Benson had married Elizabeth King, a woman ‘of no fortune’ whom he had engaged to look after his two daughters, Martha and Eleanor. He and Elizabeth had five more children, of whom two – Elizabeth and John Aislabie – were to survive into adulthood. While his daughters could be married off, there was no provision for the youngest son. In addition, Bromley, a large house with a considerable estate, appears to have become something of a millstone around Benson’s neck, involving him in ongoing and expensive efforts to defend his right to the title. In when his eldest son Earle came of age, Benson took the opportunity to initiate a process that would release the capital tied up in the settled estates. The young Earle Benson, travelling in Europe with his private tutor, was summoned from Fig . Ground plan Utrecht to sign a document that barred the entail. It of no. , Upper was agreed that the estates should be sold, the Brook Street, proceeds being divided between father and son and London, built in invested in New South Sea annuities, pending the (demolished). Crown copyright purchase of a new estate no more than miles from (NMR). London. North Stoke was sold in , Bromley in
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and Wilbury in , generating a total of about presumably gave onto the principal rooms,‘The £ , . It was later claimed that Benson had Great Dining Room’, the drawing room and the secreted Earle in lodgings in St Martin’s Lane, where ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ libraries. The dining room could he was allowed no contact with friends or family, in accommodate twelve for dinner, twice as many as the order to pressurise him into signing. It was probably dining room at Grosvenor Street, and was similarly not difficult for Benson to persuade his young son to furnished in mahogany and black leather. It was sign the document, given the combination of paternal panelled, with two pier glasses fixed in the authority and the promise of ready money. But once wainscotting, and green harrateen hangings. The Earle realized – in , when only £ , was drawing room, also large enough to hold twelve invested in South Sea annuities – that he was not people had, as at Grosvenor Street, a Turkey carpet going to get half of the proceeds, he regretted having and was furnished with a mixture of mahogany and agreed to the plan. He complained to his father and, walnut. It was spectacularly kitted out in crimson silk on November , Benson responded by damask. banishing him from home. Earle removed himself It is perhaps not surprising that Benson had two to Amesbury and asked various friends to petition libraries, given that he was adapting his needs to the Benson on his behalf. On March Benson sent existing accommodation, which may not have him a letter, in which he claimed to have incurred provided one room big enough to house all of his expenses of £ , in the sale of the estates. These books. The naming of the libraries (as ‘inner’ and included various legal costs and all the furniture at ‘outer’) is intriguing in its implications for the layout Bromley House and Wilbury. of the house. Although it might be assumed that the The next day Benson took a -year lease on a inner library opened directly off the outer library house in Wimbledon. Daniel Lysons mistakenly (like the arrangement at Ham House, Richmond), the identified Benson’s house as The Keir, but the inventory states that there was a ‘little closet’ between most likely candidate was an early seventeenth- the two rooms. Both were furnished with book century property on the south side of Wimbledon shelves, but the inner library was clearly the bigger Common, demolished in . It was owned by room and the more important. The outer library, Dame Mary Hamond, to whom Benson paid £ per with four chairs and a table, had one picture in it, a year for the term of his lease. The house was built ‘sea piece’. By contrast, the inner library, with four in or just before and by had been enlarged. tables, six leather-upholstered chairs and a An inventory taken in describes a two-storeyed microscope, was hung with two landscapes, a print of house with a large hall, two parlours, dining room, the Duke of Cumberland, a three quarter-length staircase, five chambers, service buildings and a portrait of King William III and, perhaps most ‘great barn’. By Benson’s death in the interesting for our purposes, a portrait of Inigo Jones. accommodation was more extensive, the Benson’s paintings seems to have been housed seventeenth-century hall and parlour arrangement principally at Wimbledon rather than at Grosvenor having been adapted for eighteenth-century tastes. Street where there is only mention of a few prints and The inventory taken at Benson’s death distinguishes ‘a picture of a boy piping’ in Mrs Benson’s room. His between ‘old’ and ‘new’ buildings, suggesting that he collection included several portraits, some of family bought an old house and extended it. There were and friends and many with Hanoverian connections. two staircases, one referred to as the ‘back’ stair and His friend, the Treasury Solicitor Anthony the other as ‘the Great Staircase’ which was ‘hung Cracherode, had his own bed chamber at with India paper framed’. The Great Staircase Wimbledon which was hung with pictures of George
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I, George II and Queen Caroline. William III home. There is evidence that Martha and Eleanor, appeared in the Great Dining Room. Also in the Benson’s two unmarried daughters by his first wife, Great Dining Room, which was, after all, one of the continued to live in the vicinity of Newton Toney. two public rooms in the house, was a large picture of But by Benson also had three young children by Benson himself on horseback. In the Drawing Room, his second wife (Elizabeth, aged nine; John Aislabie, the other public room, there were two portraits of aged seven; Susannah, aged three). His sale of Benson, one three-quarter length and one half-length. Wilbury, conceived as early as , was ostensibly Although the kitchen, brewhouse and laundry carried out to generate funds for the purchase of may have been integral with the house, the inventory lands within forty miles of the capital, suggesting that suggests that the remainder of the extensive ancillary Benson had long planned to establish a principal accommodation (including a stable, coach-house, residence closer to London. In , his long- barn and granary) was arranged around a forecourt. awaited appointment as Auditor of the Imprest There was also a courtyard in which there was a tree presumably required his regular presence there, with a seat built around it and a green painted perhaps sooner than he had anticipated. Pending the wooden settee. About the garden we know nothing, purchase of a suitable freehold estate, Wimbledon’s although the contents of the gardener’s tool house proximity to the capital allowed him to commute suggest that it was well maintained. In between his Mayfair town house and his suburban Richard Bradley had bemoaned the inability of the family home with relative ease. English gentry to grow exotic plants. He blamed the The Wimbledon lease may have provided a design of English conservatories which he described convenient residence, but it did not amount to a as ‘pompous edifices’ built with no regard for the significant investment for Benson’s heirs. And as requirements of tender foreign plants. Benson, Auditor, Benson must have felt the need for a grander who was importing seeds as early as , may have house; it is hard to imagine that he would be content overcome these inadequacies. At Wimbledon he had to have exchanged Wilbury Park for a leased house in a greenhouse that contained, in addition to thirty Wimbledon. Towards the end of the s he was pots of seeds and flowers, ‘about fifty pots with promoting himself as a man of cultural significance, a Exoticks’. gentleman of letters and a patron of the arts. In Benson’s house had five principal bedchambers. he wrote a set of essays, entitled Letters concerning The inventory names one as Benson’s, one as poetical translations and Virgil’s and Milton’s Arts of his daughter Elizabeth’s and one as Anthony Verse. These made clear his admiration for both Cracherode’s. Benson had a separate dressing room. poets – and his view of Milton as the natural heir of There was also a bathing room, with a bathtub, a lead Virgil. In he erected a monument to Milton in rubbing brush and two close stools. Another room is the south transept of Westminster Abbey, buying a referred to as ‘The Nursery’. Although its contents bust by Rysbrack for the plinth. There was a little suggest that by it was simply used as a disquiet at so public an endorsement of the regicide bedchamber, its name may indicate an earlier poet. Less than thirty years previously, the Dean of purpose. Given the respective sizes of the houses at Westminster Abbey had ordered the obliteration of Grosvenor Street and Brownsea, the sale of Wilbury Milton’s name on a monument to John Phillips. in must have left him with nowhere to But as Francis Peck, writing to Dr Grey in , said: accommodate his children. By this date, of course, Mr Benson … is … a gentleman, I assure you, of Earle was living in Amesbury and it is probable that exceeding good sense, and learning, and candour… William and Harry, Earle’s brothers, had also left I do not see how Westminster Abbey is profaned by a
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Cenotaph in honour of Milton, considered only as a had the busts made for Wilbury and that Henry poet. His politicks I have nothing to say to. You or I Hoare acquired them when he purchased the house may write of Milton and Cromwell and still think as we from Benson. But the busts were made four years please. after Benson had sold Wilbury to Hoare. They did In reality Benson’s adulation of Milton followed a not find their way to Stourhead until after when rehabilitation already wrought by Addison, they were bequeathed to Richard Colt Hoare by Richardson and Bentley. Others, like Alexander Benson’s grandson William Benson Earle, who had Pope, were appalled not so much by the veneration them in his house in Salisbury and wrote in a codicil of Milton as by the self-promotion of Benson’s to his will: monument. The inscription, which might be Should I ever be kindly permitted by my cousin expected to praise or quote the poet, records that: Elizabeth Benson to call the two Marbel Busts of In the year of our Lord Christ One thousand seven Milton (by Rysbrach) my own of which I have had the hundred thirty and seven possession so many years I should certainly add the This bust of the Author of Paradise Lost same in a bequest to Sir R’d Hoare hoping & wishing Was placed here by William Benson Esquire, to honour our great & divine poet with a permanent One of the two Auditors of the Imprests to his Majesty station at Stourhead. King George the Second If Benson’s ‘Country house’ was not Wilbury, which Formerly Surveyor General of the Works to his Majesty King George the First. house can it have been? The villa at Brownsea was too small to be described as such. Wimbledon hardly At the same time Benson also had a medal engraved, qualified as a ‘country house’ and, in any case, commemorating not only John Milton but, typically, Benson did not, despite his alterations, build it. As his own part in erecting the monument. Engraved we have seen, Benson planned to direct the revenue with a profile portrait of Milton based on a drawing accruing from the sale of the settled estates in a by Faithorne, it bore a Latin inscription which freehold estate within reach of London. Two years translates as ‘Rysbrach sculptured [the monument] after Benson installed himself at Wimbledon, his son of marble erected by William Benson Esq. In the Earle died of smallpox. Earle was still living in Church of St Peter, Westminster, in the year of grace Amesbury and there is no evidence that father and ’. The medal was to be presented annually, on son had been reconciled. After his death Benson the anniversary of Milton’s birthday, to the author of appears to have taken charge of the South Sea the best poem in praise of Paradise Lost . Several annuities. This, as well as his own share of the sale, copies in gold, silver and copper were struck. A total gave him considerable capital. of were still in Benson’s possession at the time of In addition to liquidating the settled estates his death, and they are mentioned in the wills of his during the s, Benson was also preoccupied with children and grandson. the legacy to which his third son Harry was entitled. In Benson commissioned two further Benson’s father-in-law, the rich Bristol merchant marble busts of Milton from Rysbrack (Figs. and Joseph Earle, had died in , leaving his landed ). One was a copy of the Westminster Abbey bust estates to his childless, ageing brother Robert. His and showed Milton in old age which, according to executors were empowered to invest Joseph Earle’s George Vertue, Benson ‘carryd to his Country house personal monies ‘in the purchase of some lands of which he has built’. The other showed Milton as a inheritance’. The whole was remaindered, in the young man. Both are now in the Library at absence of a filial heir, to Harry. As Robert was Stourhead. It has hitherto been assumed that Benson unlikely to father a son, Harry was almost certain to
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Fig . Michael Rysbrack, Young Milton , . The National Trust
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XII THE AVARICE AND AMBITION OF WILLIAM BENSON
Fig . Michael Rysbrack, Old Milton , . The National Trust
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XII THE AVARICE AND AMBITION OF WILLIAM BENSON inherit. Joseph Earle had taken the precaution of ‘the model of Grately House’. The circumstantial stipulating twice in his will that Harry’s legacy would evidence suggests that he built it no earlier than , be rendered null and void if Benson so much as when his son Earle’s death enabled him to take full attempted to get his own hands on any of the advantage of the income generated by the sale of the money. Benson thus kept well away from Joseph settled estates. It is probable that he purchased and Earle’s cash, despite asserting that his father-in-law retained the untenanted fields (one of acres) listed still owed him £ , , but he did help to direct the in Swanton’s note, while Joseph Earle’s executors purchasing activities of the executors. bought the rest of the farm. In Benson rather neatly sold the North The house appears as a block plan on an estate Stoke estate to them, thereby killing two birds with map drawn for Benson’s grandson in (Fig ). one stone, making £ , for himself and securing That no other drawings of it are known to survive is the estate for Harry. In a landowner from regrettable, for this was a house of considerable size Wallop, William Swanton, sent a note to Henry and pretension. A gateway with two substantial Hoare’s land agent, asking if he knew of a purchaser lodges gave entry onto a large square walled for Grately Farm, which he was anxious to sell. forecourt. The house itself consisted of a main block, Grately, situated between Newton Toney and approximately feet wide by feet deep, flanked Amport, was in the vicinity of lands bought in s by two long recessed wings. Each lateral wing by Benson and Hoare. All except two fields were terminated in a projecting block, which extended let to a tenant. Hoare presumably tipped off back towards the road, hidden from view by the Benson, who in turn arranged for Joseph Earle’s forecourt and estate walls. The northernmost parts executors to purchase the estate, along with of these blocks must have contained the service additional lands from Benson and his friend Anthony accommodation. In the absence of further details one Cracherode. Robert Earle died in and Harry can only speculate that the garden or south front, thereby inherited a substantial estate that comprised which was about feet wide, may have had a tower Grately, North Stoke, and property in Bristol. As a or pavilion at each end of its flanking wings. It gave condition of the legacy was the adoption of his onto a garden with a fountain and a ha-ha to the grandfather’s surname, Harry Benson thereafter fields beyond. The design may, like other country became Harry Earle. houses of the s, have drawn on Colen In Benson made a will. His eldest son was Campbell’s influential Wanstead. And although dead. His second son William was a sea captain in not on the scale of Holkham Hall or Wentworth the East India Company. With his third son well Woodhouse, the design appears to have shared neo- provided for, he left everything to his youngest son classical elements with them, not least in its use of John Aislabie, then years old. When Benson died, lateral link buildings. More unusually, it also had two however, William was shocked and angered by his rectangular inner courtyards, located to either side of exclusion. Claiming that Benson had repeatedly the main house, behind the flanking wings. promised to leave him ‘a better estate than his Although the plan as a whole cannot be shown to brother Harry’s’, William registered his protest by derive from a specific antique source, the existence of taking possession of his father’s ‘real estate, of which the inner courts, an important feature of Roman consisted only a dwelling house and about seventeen houses as reconstructed by Scamozzi and Castell, acres of land in Grately, Hampshire’. That Benson may suggest a Roman influence. Giles Worsley has built this house is strongly suggested by the fact that shown that the application of Roman architectural he kept, on the landing of the staircase at Wimbledon models, both in principle and detail, was not
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Fig . Plan of Grately Lodge. Hampshire Record Office
uncommon by the mid eighteenth century, even family’s consolidated country estates and lay among amateur architects. Benson owned copies surrounded by farmland and woodland, embodying of Felibien d’Avaux’s Descriptions des Maisons de his Virgilian ideal (Fig ). His commission of the Pline ( ) and Castell’s Villas of the Ancients Milton busts in must have been made in ( ), which included reconstructions of Pliny’s conjunction with the construction of the house and villas at Laurentum and Tuscum. His writings on would have been perfectly in keeping with its neo- Virgil strongly suggest that he perceived himself classical overtones, given Benson’s belief that Milton within a Classical landscape, perhaps literally, given was Virgil’s poetic heir. the surrounding countryside. Not far away is It is not clear to what extent the house was used Stonehenge, declared by Inigo Jones to be Roman; by the Benson family. In August Benson became Benson had a copy of Jones’s treatise on this ‘slightly disordered in his understanding’ while subject. A Roman road runs through Grately and returning from Buxton, where he had been taking the nearby is Quarley Hill, an Iron Age camp which in waters. In September he became deranged, threw Benson’s time was believed to be Roman. The himself out of a second floor window and was house at Grately was the centrepiece of the Benson subsequently, by order of his doctor, under the
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Fig . Estate map of Grately, Hampshire. Hampshire Record Office
supervision of two male attendants. Although he Miss Villiers Pitt lived there. The following year had recovered by December the following year, his Benson, a week or so before he died, let it furnished son William described him as being in a melancholy to Francis Palmer for one year. This agreement was state until he died and it was said that in the latter cancelled by William, who seized the house on his part of his life ‘he lived very retired, chiefly at father’s death, preventing the inclusion of its Wimbledon’. The suggestion that Benson went contents in the executors’ inventory. into semi-retreat after his illness is partly supported The house, by then called ‘Grately Lodge’, is by his sale, between and , of the villa at unlikely to have been used as a country residence by Brownsea. Whether his children occupied Grately William, who lived in Stoke Newington. Isaac House is uncertain. In documents of and , Taylor’s Map of Hampshire, Including the Isle of his son Harry Earle is described as being ‘of Grately’, Wight, drawn in , shows it in the possession of but by was living in the Close at Salisbury. W. Mitchel Crotley, suggesting that William had Benson’s daughters Eleanor and Martha appear to followed his father’s example and let it. William have lived in the village of Grately, but whether in died in and bequeathed Grately Lodge to his Grately House is not known. Benson probably let wife Mary for her life and thence to his brother the house on a series of short-term leases. In Harry, who already owned most of the village and
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XII THE AVARICE AND AMBITION OF WILLIAM BENSON lived in the Cathedral Close at Salisbury. There is he had added a suburban residence in Wimbledon no evidence that Mary Benson, who outlived Harry, and replaced Wilbury with a grander country ever lived at Grately. Harry’s son William Benson residence at Grateley. For a man who had not Earle inherited the Grately estate from his father and inherited a number of separate residences, this was must have acquired Grately Lodge following Mary unusual. With the exception of Wimbledon, Benson’s Benson’s death. He remained in Salisbury and houses all appear to have been neo-Palladian or does not appear to have ever stayed at Grately Lodge, classical in style, the country and maritime using the house of one of his tenants, Hugh Mundy, residences expressing architecturally his cultural pre- whenever he visited the village. The occupations, which were truly classical and enclosure award identifies a path ‘for the use of … apparently unmediated by the Italian Renaissance. William Benson Earle … and his tenant or tenants, Benson’s library contained far more books on occupiers of his Mansion House at Grately … and to classical verse, gardening and husbandry than it did … any other person … having lawful occasion to go on architecture and it is the importance which he to and from the said Mansion House’. accords to the poetic and the practical aspects of his The value of the Grately estate to Benson’s son Roman ideal which is of particular interest. The and grandson was agricultural. Both took a keen degree to which Benson took account of both in his interest in its management, Harry building a granary settings for his houses, and especially Wilbury, where and William Benson Earle investing in new he claimed responsibility for ‘all the ornaments ‘instruments of husbandry’ including a drill plough, a within doors and without and all the implements of winnowing machine and a ‘perambulator complete husbandry’, would benefit from further research. with its compass’. Neither appears to have been In practical terms Benson’s suite of houses interested in the fabric of the house and its use by a equipped him to operate at the highest social level. series of tenants probably generated maintenance Following his appointment as Auditor in , he problems. William Benson Earle let the house and its sought to establish himself as a significant cultural grounds separately. In , for example, Robert figure, patronising the arts, building a substantial Berret was leasing from him ‘the woodhouse within country residence, entertaining the Prince of Wales at the walls of the Lodge Lower Court together with the Brownsea. It was a rehabilitation cut short by the Court and Garden adjoining’. Although recorded long-term effects of his madness in . Brownsea in the house had disappeared by the time that a was sold and Grately was let to a series of tenants. Of tithe map was produced in . The field in which it his children, only two, William and Harry, married had stood was called ‘Great House Meadow’. It and had children. That they did so before Benson’s has long since been built over. breakdown may be significant. Years later his grand- Attracting an almost universally bad press, and of daughter Elizabeth, having been courted by a corrupt vindictiveness apparent in much of the Elizabeth Harris as a bride for her son James (later scanty documentation relating to his affairs, Benson’s Earl of Malmesbury) was suddenly dropped. In a reputation has never recovered from his assault on letter to him, Elizabeth Harris explained why: ‘some the King’s Works. Nevertheless, his adaptation, very good friends of yours are averse to an alliance in construction and inhabitation of several houses a family where there is a disorder that never wears simultaneously, each serving a distinct purpose, is out’. Neither Elizabeth Benson nor William instructive. By he had built a country house at Benson Earle ever married. Elizabeth lived alone at Wilbury, a maritime villa on Brownsea Island and a Grosvenor Street and William Benson Earle fashionable town house in Mayfair. By the late s remained in Salisbury, where he wrote poetry and
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XII THE AVARICE AND AMBITION OF WILLIAM BENSON composed liturgical settings for the Cathedral. He ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS inherited his grandfather’s love of Milton, made his I should like to thank, for various kinds of help and Grand Tour in and became a Fellow of the encouragement, Malcolm Airs, John Bold, Roger Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Unlike Bowdler, Sir Howard Colvin, Nicholas Cooper, John his grandfather, however, he appears to have been Fletcher, Alexandra Gajewski, John Harris, Richard popular, amenable and a great benefactor. When he Hewlings, the Countess of Iveagh, John McNeill, died, the estate that Benson had worked so hard to Richard Morris, David Park and Warwick Rodwell. secure was broken up and bequeathed to a number Thanks are also due to English Heritage for a period of his friends. William Benson Earle’s virtues are of study leave that enabled me to undertake some of commemorated in verse in Salisbury Cathedral on a the research, and to the extraordinarily helpful staffs monument designed by Flaxman and paid for by his of Tower Hamlets Local Studies Library, the principal legatee, the Reverend Horace Hayes. His Hampshire Record Office and the National grandfather was not so affectionately remembered: Monuments Record’s Photographic Department. He posed as a Maecenas, a generous patron of art, architecture, and learning, while his politics took the form of recouping himself, by lucrative office, for his over-indulgence in Aesthetics.
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NOTES Anonymous, Mr. S—— O—— his Last Speech in Le Neve notes that Sir William was not entitled to P———t on Saturday, January , / , London the arms he bore. , . This satirical overview of Benson’s THA, , Account book for the trust estate of Sir achievements in office is reliable in its identification William Benson. Payments show that Benjamin and of his corrupt activities, listing all of those recorded Harry were brought back from Holland for their by Howard Colvin (see below). father’s funeral in . Each was subsequently Howard Colvin, The History of the King’s Works , V, contracted to a merchant in Holland. In and – , London, , – . payments are recorded for Septimus’s wig, William Talman and John James have been entrance to the Temple and a four month visit to suggested as Wilbury’s architect by Giles Worsley and Paris. He died, aged , in . John Harris respectively [Giles Worsley, Classical Kenneth Woodbridge, Landscape and Antiquity: Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age , New Haven Aspects of English Culture at Stourhead to , and London, , ; John Harris, The Palladian Oxford, , : ‘your cousin Billy Benson is gone Revival: Lord Burlington, His Villa and Garden at to Hamburgh, and from thence to Sweden’ (letter Chiswick , New Haven and London, , ]. from Richard Hoare, May ). James Dunstan, The History of the Parish of Sweden was the principal source of iron at this time. Bromley St Leonard, Middlesex , London, , Sir William’s account book records regular and . payments for the sale of iron and malt during London, Tower Hamlet Archives (hereafter THA), and [THA, ]. In Benjamin Benson, an Deed , Listing of holdings to support William English merchant based in Konigsberg and Benson’s parliamentary candidacy in Shaftesbury. probably Sir William’s brother, was importing iron Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London, II, from Stockholm to England via Konigsberg London, , . [London, British Library (hereafter BL),Add. MS Lysons, op. cit., ; Dunstan, op. cit., . , , fol. ]. That the Benson family had Swedish Aldermaston Court and West Woodhay, for contacts is implied by the choice of ‘The Swedish example, both built in Berkshire in . Both are resident Mr Lienerons’ as godfather to Septimus, illustrated in Nicholas Cooper, Houses of the Gentry Benson’s youngest brother, in [THA, Poplar & – , New Haven and London, , and Bromley Parish Register]. Benson’s own trip to respectively. Sweden in is also suggestive. Cooper, op. cit., and – . Cooper also cites The marriage settlement is summarized in PRO, Condover Hall, Shropshire ( ), Bidston Hall, C / / and in Sir William Benson’s will [PRO, Cheshire ( ), and Charlton House, Woolwich PROB / ]. The original deed [Trowbridge, ( – ), suggesting that a fashion for combined Wiltshire Record Office (hereafter WRO), / ] gallery and loggias originated in London but was is so damaged that it is largely unreadable. soon taken up in the provinces. PRO, C / / . The other trustees were Henry Dunstan, op. cit., . Austen, a clerk from Bromley and Henry Fane, a Lysons, op. cit., . Bristol gentleman. C.R. Ashbee (ed.), Survey of London , I, The Parish Idem. of Bromley- by-Bow, London, (hereafter SoL, I) At the cost of £ , s [PRO, C / / ]. . THA, . In sales of iron and malt generated Dunstan, op. cit., and Lysons, op. cit., –. around £ , . In December his South Sea G.W. Marshall (ed.), Le Neve’s Pedigrees of the shares yielded £ , . Knights Made by King Charles II, King James II, THA, . In payments were made for ‘work King William III and Queen Mary, King William done at several houses in Noble Street’. The team of alone, and Queen Anne, Harleian Society, VIII, craftsmen included William Roberts (bricklayer), London, , – . Sir William was the son of Mr Lovett (carpenter), Richard Roberts (plasterer), Robert Benson of Yorkshire. His wife was the Mr Worrall (smith), Mr Maslin (mason), Mr Wilson daughter of John Austin, jeweller, of Brittons, Essex. (glazier) and William Chapman (painter). Payments
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for repairs and ground rents continued to be made Bold, op. cit., . for these houses and others in the Minories and There is no evidence that he succeeded in supplying Forster Lane until at least . In ‘some houses the house with water. While the presence of the in Bow’ were purchased in the name of Benson’s canal is suggestive, it probably pre-dates Benson’s brother, Benjamin. In £ s was spent on tenure. His familiarity with the work of Thomas freehold land in Newton Toney and £ on land in Holland may, however, have developed through his Amport, Hampshire. See also PRO C / / for a hydraulic plans for Amesbury. summary of the purchases in relation to the terms of Bold, op.cit., . the marriage settlement. Ibid. , . Roger H. Leech, The St Michael’s Hill Precinct of Ibid., . the University of Bristol: Medieval and early Modern SoL, I, . Although described by the Survey of Topography , Bristol, , . As the new owner of London in it was, regrettably, not the Little Park estate in Bristol he rebuilt the Manor photographed by the Royal Commission when the House in Park Lane in the early s and lived church was surveyed in the s. It was destroyed there until his death in . From he during the Second World War. developed two new residential streets on the estate. THA, . The payments were made in For the political careers of the Earle family see instalments over several years. Romney Sedgwick, The History of Parliament: The WRO, Newton Toney Parish Register. House of Commons, – , London, , II, –. HRO, M // . For Giles Earle see Leslie Stephen (ed.) Dictionary BL, Add.MS , , fol. . Benson proposed an of National Biography , XVI, London , – . iconographic programme with a classical theme: ‘Mr John Hutchins, The History and Antiquities of the Thornhill agrees to paint some figures on every side County of Dorset, rd ed., III, London, – , . and against you come to Town next week He will Idem . have made three or four sketches for your Jacob Banks, A Letter from Sir Jacob Banks to approbation. Wee shall pitch upon some little William Benson, Esq ., London, , . Ovidian story for each piece. I have chosen an W. Graham (ed.), The Letters of Joseph Addison , Apollo for the ceiling which in my poor opinion Oxford, , , letter to Edward Wortley does best in that situation because of the Glory Montagu (then Ambassador in Constantinople), which looks best overhead. Wee intend to have the September, . Birth of Pallas for the Long Side one of the Kerry Downes, Hawksmoor, London, , , Herculean Labors for the right hand & a Daphne or letter to Lord Carlisle, . a Pan on the left.’ Idem. Dorchester, Dorset Record Office (hereafter DRO), Trowbridge, Wiltshire Record Office (hereafter D/ B. He purchased it from William Clayton, WRO), Newton Toney parish register records the Esq.. birth, in , of John Aislabie Benson. Idem. This is certainly implied by the satire (see note DRO, D / A. ), which notes that ‘my Worthy Kinsman, Mr. G…s DRO, D / B. E…e, who spoke both first and last, has been very DRO, D / A. eloquent on my Behalf’. Very little information about Benson’s ownership of John Theophilus Desaguliers, A Course of the island survives. Matters are further obscured by Experimental Philosophy , II, London, , . local legends of Benson’s madness and involvement Ibid, . in black magic, perhaps initially generated as a result WRO, / of Benson’s unpopularity in Poole and his Idem. breakdown in , and still rehearsed in guidebooks WRO, / . today [see, eg., Rodney Legg, Brownsea, Dorset’s WRO, /. Fantasy Island , Sherborne, , ]. John Bold with John Reeves, Wilton House and DRO, Brownsea Island, Certificate of Improvements English Palladianism : Some Wiltshire Houses , made by Sir Humphry Sturt to castle and buildings London, , . on Brownsea , , August.
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John Hutchins, The History and Antiquities of the General History (hereafter SoL , XXXIX), London, County of Dorset, I, London, , . , . DRO, Brownsea Island, Indenture between Thomas London, Westminster Archive Centre, St George’s Chamberlain and John Lock, March . Hanover Square, Rate Books, – . Hutchins, op. cit., . F.H.W. Sheppard (ed.), Survey of London , The Idem. Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, XL, Part II, The Charles Van Raalte, Brownsea Island , London, , Buildings (hereafter SoL , XL), London, , . . Ibid., . Jones’ Views of Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen in PRO, PROB / / . The rooms are listed as follows: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, second ‘The Back Garret; ... the Fore Garret; ... the series, London, , u, u . When the contents of Staircase; Mrs Benson’s Room Two pair Backwards; the house were auctioned in , the sales catalogue Mr Benson’s Room Two pair Forwards; The Dining recorded a ‘splendid large circular Roman mosaic Room One Pair; The Drawing Room; The Passage; pavement on the saloon floor’ [John Lewis The Hall; The Back Room Ground Floor; The Partnership Archives, Sale Catalogue]. Kitchen; The Washouse; The Harness Room; The Christopher Morris, The Journeys of Celia Fiennes Stables; The Coachouse; The Room over the –c , London, , – ; see also John Lewis Stable; The Room under the Stairs; The Wine Vault’. Partnership Archives, Brownsea History, MS, . SoL , XL, – . Hutchins, op. cit., . SoL , XXXIX, – . Idem ; Van Raalte, op. cit., –. Ibid, , Fig a. BL, B /, A Catalogue of the Entire and Valuable Gentleman’s Magazine , LXX, , . Library of the Late William Benson, Esq. , Sold by SoL, XL , . Samuel Baker at his house in York Street, Covent Gentleman’s Magazine , loc. cit.. Garden, from – March . The catalogue is to be SoL , XL , . In , of its houses were approached with some caution as it only represents occupied by titled inhabitants and many others by Benson’s collection as it was in and may omit government officials and senior churchmen. See also books held at Grately (see below) and those M.H.Port, ‘West End Palaces: The Aristocratic allegedly destroyed during his later years at Town House in London, – ’, London Brownsea. By far the greatest proportion of books Journal, XX ( ), , . concern husbandry or classics. The number of SoL, I, cit., . architectural books is, at about , relatively low and PRO, C / / , Chancery suit, William Earle does not include any editions of Palladio. Benson v John Aislabie Benson, Initial Pleadings, William Benson, Virgil’s Husbandry: An Essay on . the Georgicks , London, . Idem. S.M. Walters, The Shaping of Cambridge Botany , Idem. The events summarized in the text are Cambridge, , – . described in detail. Van Raalte, op. cit., . Idem. Garth Christian, ‘Brownsea Island – A Famous Idem. Unfortunately, the name of the house is not Sanctuary Saved’, Country Life , CXXXII, August , given. In a letter to his son, quoted in this , . document, Benson wrote ‘I leave you the liberty of Hutchins, op. cit., . my house until next Wednesday night that you may Idem. in the mean time provide for yourself elsewhere’. Jethro Tull, Essay on Tillage and Vegetation, Idem. The original letter is not known to survive, London, , ‘It’s my opinion that the Italians in but is quoted in full here. changing Virgil’s field husbandry have acted more Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London, I, London, responsibly than these English who retain it, , . The Keir was not built until because I think it impossible for any scheme in [Richard Milward, pers.comm .]. general to be worse’. London, Wimbledon Society Museum, Ref. A . . F.H.W. Sheppard (ed.), Survey of London , The I am grateful to Dr Elspeth Veale and Mr. Richard Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair , XXXIX, Part , Milward for their identification of Benson’s house.
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PRO, PROB / / . John Kenworthy-Browne, ‘Portrait Busts by London, Lambeth Palace, Inventory No. . Rysbrack’ in Gervase Jackson-Stops (ed.), National Idem . The inventory lists the following rooms: The Trust Studies , London, , . The bust was Garret over the New Buildings and Closet; The originally made for Thomas Serjeant, and was Little Closet on the Stair Head; The Closet lower bought by Benson from Sir Joseph Eyles. down; The Bed Chamber over the Dining Room; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Historical Memorials of The Maids Chamber on the Stairs; Mr Cracherode’s Westminster Abbey , London, , . Room; Miss Benson’s Room; Mr Benson’s Room; S.A. Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of English The Lobby; The Nursery; Mr Benson’s Dressing Literature … Vol , London, , . Room; The Garrets over the Old Buildings – The ‘On poets’ tombs see Benson’s titles writ’ first Garret on the left hand, The Second Garret [Alexander Pope, The Dunciad in four Books , backwards, The Third back Garret, The Fourth London, , Book III, line ]. Garret or Apple Room, The Fifth or Further Garret; Edward Hawkins, Augustus W Franks and Herbert the Closet; The Staircases – the Back Stair and A Grueber, Medallic Illustrations of the history of Passages, The Great Staircase; The Drawing Room; Great Britain and Ireland to the Death of George II , The Great Dining Room; The inner Library; The II, London, and , . Room over the inner Library; The little Closet Kenworthy-Browne, op. cit.; see also Katharine between the Two Libraries; The Bathing Room …; Arundell Esdaile, The Art of John Michael Rysbrack The Outer Library; …the Hall; The Butlers Pantry; in Terracotta , London, , , on the terracotta The Kitchen Scullerys and Pantrys; The model for one of the busts, now in the Fitzwilliam Brewhouse; The Cellar; The Laundry; The Closet Museum, Cambridge. by the Kitchen; The Out Pantry; The Greenhouse, PRO, PROB / . Yard and Garden; The Barn, Coachouse and Stable; PRO, C / / and PROB / . The Room over the Coachouse; The Loft; The PRO, C / / . Hamper Hole; The Granary; The Coachouse PRO, PROB / . Stable; The Fore Court; The Powder Room; The Idem, ‘I declare that if William Benson on pretence Further Courtyard; The Gardener’s Tool House. of any money due to him … molest my … executor Idem, ‘three pairs of crimson damask window … none of his children … shall have any benefit…’ curtains with brass rods … three stuffed seats to the PRO, C / / . windows covered with crimson silk damask … a Idem. settee covered with crimson silk damask ..’ HRO, M //. In Henry Hoare settled an Idem, ‘A Scythe, Two Rools, Two Spades, a Dung account with his agent Thomas Francis which Fork, Four Dutch Hows, an Edging Iron, a Paddle, included a payment of £ s for the conveyance of a large Hoe … a Turfing Iron, a Scoring Knife, Two ‘Gratley estate’ to Mr Hoare. After Hoare’s death in Mattocks, Four watering Pots, a long cutting Hook, the title deeds to the land could not be found, a Hammer, Two Dippers, Two pairs of Sheers, Two ‘but as Mr Auditor Benson was concerned in the Rakes, Two Mole Traps, a Shovel,a Dung Barrow, purchase of the severall estates mentioned … there Three Dozens of Pots’ is some reason to imagine them amongst his writings Richard Bradley, Survey of Ancient Gardening & or left by him in the hands of somebody but he tells Husbandry , London, . me he knows nothing of them’. Hoare had also PRO, PROB / / . purchased ‘the manner of Greatly and a messuage & WRO, Newton Toney parish register. In farm therein’ in . William was and Harry years old. Eleanor was HRO, M / and . . Martha’s age is not known, but she is likely to PRO, PROB / . Harry’s wife and children also have been older than William. In Eleanor died took this name, his elder son being known as not far from Newton Toney ‘at Grately’. Martha was William Benson Earle. living in Grateley in when she made her will PRO, PROB / . [HRO, A/ ]. Both women were buried at PRO, C / / . He resigned his ship in . Newton Toney. Idem. PRO, C / / . PRO, PROB / / .
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HRO, M // . PRO, PROB / / , ‘since the deceased’s death John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, to William Earle Benson Esq. hath … taken possession , Harmondsworth, , – ; Worsley, op. of such estate pretending himself intitled thereto.’ cit., . Those closest to Grately included John The inventory notes the exclusion of ‘the furniture Wood’s Prior Park, begun in and John of the deceased at Grately’. Sanderson’s Stratton Park, Hampshire, built for PRO, PROB / . William Earle Benson died in Lord John Russell in . Stoke Newington in , having made his will there Worsley, op. cit., – . in . In it he refers to ‘Grately Lodge’. Inigo Jones [John Webb (ed.)], The most notable Swindon, National Monuments Record, AO , Antiquity of Great Britain, vulgarly called Stone- PF /. heng, restored, . Benson owned a copy of the PRO, PROB / . edition. Continuing uncertainty over the validity of William C.F.C. Hawkes, ‘The Excavations at Quarley Hill. Earle Benson’s will [PRO, PROB / ] – probate ’, Papers and Proceedings of the Hampshire was still not granted in – may explain why his Field Club and Archaeological Society, XIV, Part , nephew William Benson Earle referred to the Milton , . Hawkes shows that John Aubrey’s busts as belonging to his cousin Elizabeth. erroneous description, in his Monumenta HRO, M //. This memorandum formalizes Britannica, of Quarley as ‘a great Roman Camp’, William Benson Earle’s habit of using Mundy’s repeated in Gough’s edition of Camden’s House ‘as he has always had, whenever he has Britannia, retained some credence as late as . visited Grately’. His father appears to have had a Benson’s old friend Henry Hoare had a house in similar arrangement with Hugh Elton, in whose Quarley and, in , he and Benson inserted a Grately home he retained personal possessions Serlian east window in the church, its exterior and [PRO, PROB / ]. interior inscribed, Roman fashion, with their names HRO, Q / . [Colvin, Biographical Dictionary , cit ., 123]. Idem; and PRO, PROB / . PRO, C / / . PRO, PROB / . Colvin, King’s Works, cit., . See PRO, C / / HRO, M /F / /–, Grately Tithe Map and for William Earle Benson’s description of his Award. father’s ongoing melancholia (which may be PRO, C / / . overstated in support of his claim against his step- HRO, M /G / . Letter from Elizabeth Harris brother). See J. Nicholls, Literary Anecdotes of the to her son James, November . I am grateful to Eighteenth Century, II, London, , , for Rosemary Dunhill for this reference. reference to Benson’s withdrawal to Wimbledon. William Benson Earle’s will [PRO, PROB / ] HRO, M //, and . And in Harry Earle had provides much information on his interests, friends registered the birth of his son William Benson Earle and charitable bequests. See J. Nichols Illustrations in Shaftesbury [DRO, Shaftesbury, St James parish of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century , register]. London , –, for a character sketch and See note . biographical note. For details of the Flaxman Francis Price, A Series of Particular and Useful monument see Edward Croft-Murray, ‘An Account Observations made with Great Diligence and Care Book of John Flaxman, RA’, Walpole Society , upon that Admirable Structure the Cathedral-Church XXVIII, – , . of Salisbury , London . The list of subscribers to Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine , XLVI, – , this volume includes Miss Villiers Pitt, resident of –. ‘Greatley Lodge’.
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