Robert Benson, 1st Baron Bingley

Robert Benson (painting by Godfrey Kneller )

Robert Benson, 1st Baron Bingley (* 1676 in Wrenthorpe near Wakefield ; † April 9, 1731 ) was an English statesman and one of the main responsible persons in the so-called " South Sea Bubble ", in which numerous people lost their fortunes and the English economy was strong harmed.

Benson, son of the wealthy attorney Robert Benson of Wrenthorpe and Dorothy Jenkins, was baptized in Wrenthorpe on March 25, 1676. He studied at Christ's College , Cambridge , where he was accepted as a Fellow in the spring of 1691 at the age of 15, and went on the Grand Tour in 1693 or 1694 , visiting the Netherlands, France and Italy. He visited castles and gardens, which shaped his taste throughout his life. Pevsner described his summer residence Bramham as an Italian villa in a French castle garden) and acquired language skills.

Between 1702 and 1705, through the influence of his brother-in-law, the Baronet Sir John Wodehouse, he was elected Tory MP for Thetford . Only a few political activities of Benford from this period are documented. He is said to have fought with the Whig son of William Lowther , but it remains open whether it was about political issues. When Wodehouse wanted to take his seat in Thetford again, Benson's uncle Tobias Jenkins gave him his seat for York in 1705 , which he held until 1713. Shortly before the May election, he had been declared councilor .

After his mentor Robert Harley was appointed treasurer as Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer , Benson took over his office as chancellor on June 14, 1711 , a position he held until August 1713, although he was not considered particularly capable.

On July 21, 1713 he was given the hereditary title of Baron Bingley , of Bingley in the County of York. The title belonged to the Peerage of Great Britain and was associated with a seat in the House of Lords . Although raised to the nobility, he was not socially recognized. Robert Walpole made fun of the missing coat of arms. However, he enjoyed the trust of Queen Anne , who verifiably visited him in Bramham Park. From July 1711 to February 1715 he was one of the directors of the South Seas Company, into which he had paid £ 3,000. He was also involved in the legislation on the South Seas Company and was very active in stock sales. When the bubble burst in 1720, was Benson's coach in London at Cavendish Square stoned. But he was not prosecuted for his involvement. After supporting the Whig government in 1730, he was made treasurer of George II as a reward , which he remained until his death and was buried on April 14, 1731 in St. Paul's Chapel at Westminster Abbey . As a politician, he was described as a "watery Tory" and "nobody", for Joseph Addison he was even close to the conservatives.

Benson first lived in Red Hall near Wakefield . He then inherited the country estate of Bramham Park or Branham Moor near Wetherby in Yorkshire from his father, construction of which had begun in the 1690s, and completed it in 1710. Benson acquired most of his wealth through the South Sea Bubble and used it, among other things, to expand Bramham and its parks, which were modeled on French parks in the style of Le Nôtres . Since it is not known who designed the garden, it is often assumed that it goes back to Benson personally. His London residence was Queen Street, Westminster.

Benson married Lady Elizabeth Finch , daughter of Heneage Finch , Baron Guernsey , later 1st Earl of Aylesford, in 1703 , a marriage which worked for him politically. He had an illegitimate daughter named Mary Johnson, to whom he left in his will (June 27, 1729 and March 9, 1729) £ 7,000 and the name Benson. Walpole, his political opponent, claimed that his godchild, John Burgoyne , officially the son of the broken soldier John Burgoyne and the merchant's daughter Anna Maria Burnestone, was his son. Others also suspected this. Benson left Anna Maria Burnestone in his will with an income of £ 400 a year to which her husband had no access and an estate in Hertfordshire and the right to live in her home on Prospect Street, London, for free. Her husband, Captain John Burgoyne, was forgiven of his considerable debts. John Burgoyne was to inherit Harriet if she died childless, and then take the name John Benson. His only legitimate child, the daughter Harriet, inherited Benson after he died of pleurisy . She received, among other things, Bramham, £ 100,000 cash and an annual rental income of £ 7,000. His wife inherited the house on Queen Street. Harriet continued to develop the gardens her father had laid out in Bramham Park. The title Baron Bingley expired and was only recreated in 1762 for George Fox-Lane , Harriet's husband.

The Scottish writer and politician George Lockhart characterized Benson as a confused speaker who excelled more through humor and good living than through business acumen (" a man of wit and pleasure than of parts and capacity of business. "). Jonathan Swift , after all, praised his elegant table manners. He was also considered well-read.

literature

• D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley (Eds.): The History of Parliament. The House of Commons 1690-1715. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002.

Web links

• bramhampark.co.uk
• historyofparliamentonline.org
• historical images of Bramham Park

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dorothy Jenkins on thepeerage.com , accessed August 16, 2015.
2. ↑ Benson, Robert . In: John Venn , John Archibald Venn (eds.): Alumni Cantabrigienses . A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900. Part 1: From the earliest times to 1751 , volume 1 : Abbas-Cutts . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1922, pp. 136 ( venn.lib.cam.ac.uk Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
3. ^ ^{A b} Guy Cooper, Godon Taylor: The curious gardeners, Obsession and diversity in 45 British gardens. Headline, London 2001, p. 30
4. ^ Niklaus Pevsner: The West Riding (revised by Enid Radcliffe. Hammondsworth, Penguin, Yorkshire 1967.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} historyofparliamentonline.org
6. ↑ leodis.net according to other information he got it from the Crown Robert Benson, 1st and last Baron of Bingley on thepeerage.com , accessed on August 16, 2015.
7. ↑ bramhampark.co.uk
8. ^ ^{A b} Robert Benson, 1st and last Baron of Bingley on thepeerage.com , accessed August 16, 2015.
9. ^ Letter to Mason, October 5, 1777. images.library.yale.edu/walpoleimages/
10. ↑ keithblayney.com
11. ↑ James Hadden , Hadden's Journal and Orderly Books. A journal kept in Canada and upon Burgoyne's campaign in 1776 and 1777. Albany J. Munsell's Sons, 1884, p. 390.

predecessor	Office	successor
Robert Harley	Chancellor of the Exchequer 1711–1713	William Wyndham
Paul Methuen	Treasurer of the Household 1730-1731	John West