Joseph Benson

Joseph Benson
Joseph Benson
Born	January 26, 1749 Kirkoswald, Cumberland
Died	February 16, 1821
Occupation	Methodist minister

Joseph Benson (1749–1821) was an early English Methodist minister, one of the leaders of the movement during the time of Methodism's founder John Wesley.

The son of John Benson and Isabella Robinson, his wife, he was born on 26 January 1749, in the parish of Kirkoswald, Cumberland. His father wished him to become a clergyman, sent him to the village school, and then was under a Mr. Dean, a Presbyterian minister living in the parish.

Aged 15, Benson opened a small school in Gamblesby. A cousin took him to a Methodist conventicle, and they read Wesley's sermons. In December 1765 he set off on foot to hear Wesley preach in Newcastle-on-Tyne, arrived too late, but followed him to London. With an introduction to Wesley, he was taken on Bristol in March 1766, and appointed classical master at Kingswood School. There he preached and held cottage and prayer meetings, but remained an Anglican.

Benson went in 1769 to St Edmund Hall, Oxford. In the same year he lost his father. At Kingswood he had met John William Fletcher, who mentioned him to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. As a result the Countess asked Benson in 1770 to take the post of head of her Trevecca College. There was a theological difference: the Countess was Calvinistic, while Fletcher and Benson were Arminian. The appointment went badly, but the Countess gave Benson a testimonial.

With a presentation to Rowley, a parish near West Bromwich, Benson applied for ordination, but James Johnson, the Bishop of Worcester refused to ordain him. Benson from then on became a Methodist, and an effective evangelical preacher. He tried in the mid-1770s to broker a deal that would make the Methodists a "daughter church" of the Church of England, working with the Anglican Fletcher, but Wesley was not in agreement.

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