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OBITUARY.
Rev. Thomas Benson, B.A.
We much regret to announce the death of this able Essex botanist. He passed
away very quietly on June 9th, 1887, at the advanced age of 84. Thomas
Benson was the son of the Rev. John Benson, St. Helens, Cockermouth,
Cumberland, and was born in October, 1802. He was educated at St. John's
College, Cambridge, and took his degree in 1824, obtaining the place of a Senior
Optime in the Mathematical Tripos. He was at first intended for the Bar, and
was at the Temple two years, contemporaneously with his uncle, the late Canon
Benson, Master of the Temple. His father was most energetic in forwarding
Henry Brougham's election for the county of York in 1830, and himself spent
£20,000 thereon ; Brougham's immense reputation and popularity prevailed, and
upon election he was included in the Reform ministry, and at length accepted
the Chancellorship with a peerage. He presented his friend's son Thomas, but
lately ordained, to the vacant living of North Fambridge, Essex, in 1832—a by
no means promising prospect for an accomplished and affable young man. The
parish was small and out-of-the-way, with a population of less than two hundred ;
a very small old church, no parsonage, and a stipend of under £300. Here his
life proved very uneventful, he lived almost entirely with his few people and in
his botanical studies. He was a great walker in his young days, and never left
home without his botanical book and box. Two or three times a week he would
walk to Baddow, Danbury, and Chelmsford, to Maldon, or would cross the Crouch
into Rochford Hundred, in search of plants; if he heard of a rare one occurring,
no distance was too great for him to go in search of it. Fortunately, Mr. George
Stacey Gibson went to see him when the "Flora of Essex" was in preparation,
and thus some of the information he possessed is chronicled; Henry Ibbotson
also visited him, and collected for Mr. Gibson in localities which Benson pointed
out. Of the 1070 species occurring in Gibson's "Flora," Benson found 643 in
Essex, exclusive of the forms of Ranunculus aquatilis, and the species of Rubus,
Salix, Carex, and Chara.
Owing to local circumstances, to which this is not the place to refer,
his new rectory was built three quarters of a mile from a bye road, half a
mile from his church as the crow flies, but a good four and a half miles by road,
on a piece of cold, wet, heavy land, and even in these latter days was visited by the
postmen and the butcher but once a week. But what in 1830 was a fallow field,
became in 1880 far and away the prettiest garden in the neighbourhood. It was
only four or five years ago that we visited it, and it was delightful to hear the once
energetic gardener—already entirely crippled and nailed to his chair by rheumatism
and paralysis, blind with his left eye, with the other very weak, in itself a
serious affliction to so voracious a reader—refer to his stock of fine shrubs and
flowers, many of which it was really difficult to believe he had planted. He
would call one's attention to many noteworthy specimens, and detail their
history and parentage or the peculiar treatment they had received. Mr. Benson
was liberal to a fault in matters of opinion, and has long been loved and respected
by his small band of parishioners (the population of North Fambridge in 1881
was only one hundred and forty-two) and indeed by al] who knew him. It is
much to be regretted that his stores of local botanical and antiquarian informa-
tion have died with him. On occasions when we have read to him some of our