The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-12-13
SECOND TO ROYALTY.
Splendid Position Of the Arch
bishop of Canterbury.
THE CHURCH GIFTS ALoTTERY.
How . Poor Country Clergyman's Son
Reached the Highest Place-He Iss
Liberal Man. Not . Bigot.

] the Church OF England. one man. start
| ing with all the advantages OF wealth and
| rank, never gets any of the prizes. An
| other man, with no more brains than the
| first, starting from nothing, with nothing,
| reaches position Of splendor second only
| to royalty. Hundreds Of clergymen of the
! Church of England, gentlemen by birth,
with excellent talents and rare scholar
ship. starve all their Life in country cura-
cies on $500 year or less. Many OF them
never have 500 a year clear to keep
wife and family on and main
tain a decent position in the edu-
Gated class. But others meet with
nothing but luck from start to finish, and
arrive at honorS which must astonish
themselves, if they ever think Of what
they have been and what they are. DR..
Edward White Benson belongs distinctly
to the latter division. He has all along
been one of the luckiest of the lucky ones
He was born in 1929, the son of a poor
country clergyman near Birmingham, and
was educated at King Edwards school, in
that town. He never really had the adj
vantage of what is called "a public
school education" The great public
schools of England, Eton, Harrow,
Westminster and Winchester, where
the sons of the aristocracy are educated
at an expense of $3.50 or $1,000 year,
look down even on such famous seats of
learning as Rugby, Marlborough and Well
lington, the Charterhouse, Kings College
school, st. Paul's school, or Merchant
1aylor's. As for the schools founded by
King Edward the Sixth. the Bluecoat
school, the Kings school at Bruton, or
King Edwards school at Birmingham,
they regard them as little better than
charity schools. Yet it was at one of
these despised seminaries-which, in real
lty, are as good schools as there are in the
world-that the archbishop of Canterbury
got all the schooling he ever had. He
did so well, however, that he was sent TO
Trinity college, Cambridge, one of the
grandest institutions in either of the
great universities; and after that all he
had to do was TO go straight ahead. To be
anything of a scholar at Trinity college
means having very comfortable income
and enjoying all sorts of opportunities.
Young Benson worked like a slave and
took everything that was to be taken. He
gained first scholarship, then fellow
ship-with $1,000 year as long as the fell
low remains unmarried-graduated first
class and senior optime, and left the
university carrying with him almost all
the university could give to SO young a
man. 1t was just then he showed his
good judgment in pushing his own for
tunes. He had taken holy orders, and
most young clergymen, after such bril-
liant college course, would have accepted
college living and settled down as a
country parson, never, probably. to be
heard of again.
Benson knew better. He sought and
obtained an assistant mastership at Rug
by, and cheerfully applied himself to the
drudgery of second-class public school.
When the church of England was threat
ened with establishment Lord Beacons-
field wittily remarked that it would never
be in any real danger as long as the clergy
had the privilege of logging the nobility.
What he meant was that the nobility were
all brought up at public schools, where all
the masters were clergymen; and so
long as they were SO, the influence
of the clergy over their former
pupils would always be enough
to protect the church. From the
same cause, clergyman who endears
himself TO his pupils at public school is
pretty sure to get promotion; and no one
knew that better than Benson. From
being an assistant master at Rugby he
was made head master OF Wellington COL
lege, magnificent school founded in 1858
as memorial to the great Duke of We'll
ington, for the sons of officers only, but
afterwards thrown open TO all who could
afford to pay the fees and pass the exam
nations. Here he found congenial
field for his abilities, and it is not too
much to say that he was the making of
Wellington college. He was head master for
fourteen years, and although the boys were
not particularly distinguished for learn
ing or athletics, the school became more
numerous and more aristocratic every
year. What Dr. Benson--for he was now
q doctor of acknowledgements under
stood was the art of managing parents
His saint-like face and honeyed manners
were quite irresistible. There was such a
rush to Wellington college that hundreds
were refused every term. 1t was not likely
that such g successful head master should
spend all his life in that position. He was
already marked out for church preferment
and IL was simply question of what he
would accept. In 1872, when still only AZ,
he was made canon res.duary and chan
cellor of Lincoln cathedral, while both Ok
ford and Cambridge made him select
preacher to the university, very rare
honor indeed
He never was really fine preacher and
he never will be. There is too much oil
of gladness in his eloquence too much
smoothness and far too much Greek and
Latin and Hebrew. But the women all
worship him, and even among men there
were a great many who welcomed his re-
tinement and his mildness as a change
from the roughness and violence of the
old low church clergy. Lord Beaconsfeld
had his eye on him as man suited to the
times, and on the creation of the see of
Truro in 1876, he made Benson the first
bishop. From that time forward no pre-
late in England was so much heard Of as
descending 10 the arts of self-advertise-
ment, he certainly lost no opportunity
OF keeping himself in full view
OF the government and the pub
lie. In 1850 the famous Are 1bishop
TAFT died, and DR.. Benson, though the
youngest of the bishops, was placed at one
bound on the throne of st. Augustine. He
to Lambeth palace. which has been in the
possession of the archbishops of Canter-
bury for 700 years and is one Of the most
interesting places in England. 1t stands
on the shore of the Thames ct a spot
which in the Saxon days was a crossing
place for aocks-a hithe, as il was called
whence the name Lambeth, or lamb hithe
because lambs could cross there. But now
II IS enclosed, with its spacious gardens. in
one OF the most crowded and sQualid
manufacturing quarters of London, ex-
cept towards the north, where it
looks pleasantly over the Albert
embankment and the river at
Westminster palace on the Middlese4 side.
Here are the beautiful buildings erected by
Archbishop Boniface in 1894, and the cele-
hrated Lollards' tower, where the Torerun-
ners OF the Protes tants were imprisoned