BENISON. 293 obedient to the tyrannical proceedings of the bishops. Our author adds, " that he fixed his station in London, refused to go to church, gathered conventicles, and sought to promote schism and confusion in the city. That the bishop finding in him unspeakable disobedience, and he refusing the oath usually tendered by the high com- mission, (meaning the oath ex officio, by which he would have become his own accuser,) was committed to prison. And," our learned historian asks, " what could the bishop have done less ?" It is not very difficult to find out many things, which his lordship might not have done less than this, even admitting that Mr. Benison was deserving of punishment. Four or five years' confinement in prison is a penalty of no small magnitude, and appears greatly disproportionate to any crime with which he was charged. And, indeed, Mr. Strype himself intimates as much, in the very next words : " But," says he, " it seems the bishop overshot himself, and didnot proceed so circumspectly in the imprisonment of him for so long a time. For Mr. Benison's cause being brought before the lords of the council, the bishop was judged to have dealt too hardly with him ; for which, there fore, he received a reprimand. Mr. Benison having suffered so long a confinement in prison, applied both to the queen and council ; and in the statement of his own case, he declares concerning his mar- riage, the irregularity of which was the crime alleged against him, " That he had invited only forty persons to the solemnity, and only thirty attended : that he was married in the morning, and according to law : that when the bishop sent for him, charging himwith sedition, he cleared himself to his lordship's satisfaction ; but that after he went home, he gave a private order under his own hand for him to be apprehended and sent to the Gatehouse; and that he was there shut up in a dungeon eight days, without knowing the cause of his imprisonment. " - Moreover, when Mr. Benison was first apprehended and carried to prison, he was plundered of a great part of his household furniture; his valuable library was utterly spoiled and taken away, and he suffered great losses in various other ways., + Dr. Hammond, and his faithful friend Mr. John Fox, who were Strype's Aylmer, p. 209, 210. t Ibid. p. 211, 212, t Ibid.
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