BENSON, Henry (1579-1643), of High Street, Knaresborough, Yorks.

Benson’s father, Peter Benson, rose from the rank of yeoman to become Knaresborough’s leading landowner and most influential inhabitant. In 1616 he secured the place of bailiff, or under-bailiff, of the borough – and ex officio returning officer – and also served as collector of the borough rents.10DL4/70/8; W.A. Atkinson, ‘A parliamentary election in Knaresborough in 1628’, YAJ xxxiv, 215, 216, 217; Hist. of Harrogate and Knaresborough ed. B. Jennings, 138. Described in 1619 as ‘a man of great wealth’, he came to own 16 of the town’s 90 or so burgage tenements – the largest individual holding of such properties – and during the 1620s he effectively replaced Sir Henry Slingsby† as the borough’s principal electoral patron.11C3/318/30; Bodl. MS. Top. Yorks. c.4, ff. 5v-15, 26v; Bodl. MS Firth b.2, f. 181v; Harrogate Public Lib. Atkinson MSS, 2. Henry Benson’s return for Knaresborough in 1626 and 1628 was achieved on both occasions at the expense of Slingsby’s son, the future royalist Sir Henry Slingesby*, who had represented the town in the 1625 Parliament.12HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Henry Benson’; ‘Knaresborough’. Having taken over from his father as bailiff of the borough, Benson was able to pass on this office to his stepson William Dearlove* in about 1630.13Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 261; CJ ii. 488b.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Knaresborough returned Slingesby and Benson, in that order, with Sir Richard Hutton†, who had represented the borough in the 1620s, coming third on a poll. As in previous Parliaments, Benson made no recorded impression upon the House’s proceedings. In another contested election that autumn, Slingesby and Benson retained their seats and Hutton was again defeated on a poll.14Supra, ‘Knaresborough’. Within a few months of the assembling of the Long Parliament, Benson had aroused suspicion that was sending intelligence of the House’s proceedings to his Catholic gentry friends in the West Riding. No action was taken against him at Westminster, but the godly future parliamentarian Thomas Stockdale* – who had been on friendly terms with the Bensons during the early 1630s – was not altogether convinced by Dearlove’s assurances that his step-father ‘had been cleared of the crime by the testimony of some good friends in the House’.15W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), WYL132/100, 17-18, 239, 280; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 227-8, 264. Granted leave of absence on 2 April 1641 to put his estate in order following the death of his father, Benson had returned to Westminster by 8 May, when he was named to a committee on a bill for the better levying of mariners.16CJ ii. 115b, 139b. This was the only committee appointment he received during his parliamentary career.

During the spring of 1641, Benson attempted to organise a petition to Parliament from the inhabitants of Knaresborough, complaining about the local administration of military charges by the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), who would command Parliament’s northern army during the civil war. Benson’s motive for this initiative, thought Stockdale, was ‘an ancient, cankered ill affection’ to Fairfax.17Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 108, 112. Writing to Fairfax on 18 June, Stockdale claimed that Benson had been at Knaresborough for the past eight weeks and that he, Stockdale, had obtained copies of some of Benson’s correspondence (presumably with local Catholics) which he hoped Fairfax could put to ‘good purpose ... though truly, in my own opinion, I find not much exception that can be taken at them’.18Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 112-13.

In the event, Benson played right into his enemies’ hands by setting up an ‘office’ at Westminster for selling protections to men who were not his servants, for sums in excess of £2 per document. When questioned by the Commons’ committee for protections, he admitted to the practice, but conceived that it was his privilege as an MP. After hearing the committee’s findings on 2 November, the Commons voted to disable Benson from sitting as being ‘unworthy and unfit’ to be an MP and had him sent for as a delinquent. It was further resolved that a writ be issued for a fresh election at Knaresborough.19CJ ii. 301; D’Ewes (C), 66.

Shortly after Benson’s expulsion from the Commons in November 1641, Lord Fairfax’s son Sir Thomas Fairfax* wrote to Sir Henry Slingesby, asking that he engage his electoral interest at Knaresborough on behalf of Sir William Constable*. Slingesby sent word to Benson that he had lost his seat and requested that he ‘use his means for electing a friend’ whom Slingsby would name. On receiving this ‘unadvised intelligence’, however, Benson ‘laboured all the borough men’ for his son-in-law William Dearlove, for whom he had secured a patent as deputy-steward of the honour of Knaresborough – in addition to his office as bailiff of the borough – from the queen’s chancellor (the honour being part of the queen’s jointure lands). On election day, Dearlove received 33 votes, Constable a mere 13. According to Constable, Dearlove had been pressured into standing by Benson, who ‘with many oaths swore he would oppose those who had opposed him’ – a reference principally, it seems, to Lord Fairfax and Stockdale. Both Constable and Stockdale claimed that many of the town’s inhabitants had feared to vote against Dearlove because of his and Benson’s habit of using their authority and influence to vex and oppress those who had opposed them; and claimed that Benson and his confederates, as ‘officers by deputation’, held Knaresborough in ‘insufferable bondage’, committing ‘many abuses ... to the wrong of both the queen their mistress and the subjects’. They further alleged that Benson had given ‘frequent intelligence to papists of good quality of all passages of Parliament concerning their party, they being his chief countenancers and supporters’.20Supra, ‘Knaresborough’; Bodl. Fairfax 32, ff. 35, 37; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 260, 261, 262-5. In a letter to Lord Fairfax that December, Stockdale again emphasized Benson’s Catholic connexions: ‘Henry Benson keeps close in his own house, and the recusants daily resort to him; and I am persuaded he will profess himself of their religion and hath some hopes of employment that way from the queen’s side’. He added, however, that Benson, somewhat surprisingly, was a close friend of the future parliamentarian radical Sir Henry Ludlowe*, father of the future regicide Edmund Ludlowe II*.21Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 290.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to arrest Benson at his home in January 1642, the Commons renewed its order that he be sent for as a delinquent. There were further attempts to seize him in February but these were foiled by his family and friends in Knaresborough.22CJ ii. 393b-394a, 533b, 488b; PJ i. 163, 170, 172; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 346, 348, 363, 366, 376, 379, 392, 394. The order for Benson’s arrest was reiterated on 8 October; and at some point in the spring of 1643, Stockdale and a group of Knaresborough men, ‘combining and confederating against Benson, and all of them being in arms under the command of Lord Fairfax, did in a violent and hostile manner in the night time seize and carry away the said Henry Benson and William Dearlove ... pretending they were persons disaffected to Parliament’.23CJ ii. 800a; iii. 20a; C10/72/45. By the time Benson made out his will, on 8 March 1643, he was ‘a prisoner in strait durance’.24Borthwick, Prerogative Court, bundle Oct. 1643. On 27 March, the Commons ordered that he be committed to Newgate prison – where he died, ‘for want of food’, in September of that year.25CJ iii. 20a; C33//221, f. 748; C10/72/45. His place and date of burial are not known.

In his will, which features a firmly Protestant preface, Benson wrote that his estate was ‘much encumbered and embroiled, so as all means is taken from me of freeing and clearing it as I could have wished and desired, all the country being witnesses of my great losses and plundering I lately suffered by the Parliament party’. He bequeathed his house in Knaresborough and lands in and around the town to his wife and in reversion to the Dearloves, but claimed that the bulk of his estate, including 12 burgage tenements, had been illegally detained by that ‘cunning patch’ Stockdale on the basis of a contract that he had made with the Bensons in 1634.26Borthwick, Prerogative Court, bundle Oct. 1643. When the Dearloves pursued this claim in chancery after the Restoration, Stockdale’s heir insisted that his father had purchased the Bensons’ properties outright and in perpetuity.27C33//221, f. 748; C10/72/45. Apart from Dearlove, who also died in Newgate, Benson was the only member of his family to sit in Parliament.