THE family was settled in Berkshire, when, towards the close of the sixteenth century, two brothers Bennet went to London, and respectively made their fortunes by successful commercial undertakings. From the elder descended a certain Sir John Bennet, living at Dawley, county Middlesex, who married Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Crofts of Saxham, county Norfolk. The subject of this notice was their second son. He was educated under the paternal roof till he went to Oxford, and was entered a student at Christ Church, where he took his degree as B.A. and M.A., and was much esteemed both as scholar and poet. He remained some time at the University, where he was still a resident when the Court arrived in 1644.
He was presented to King Charles, and soon after entered the army as a volunteer. Lord Digby, then Secretary of State, took a fancy to young Bennet, and appointed him Under-Secretary. But this post did not interfere with his military duties; he was ever in the field ‘when honour called,’ and was so severely wounded at Andover, in an engagement near that town, as to be invalided for a long time. He was indeed dangerously ill, and there is little doubt that it was in one of these encounters that he received the scar by which he is so well known in all his portraits.
Deeply attached to the Royal cause, on the termination of the war Bennet went to France, and on into Germany and Italy, never losing sight of the hope of once more joining and serving the house of Stuart. In 1649 he was summoned to Paris by James Duke of York, to fill the post of private secretary.
King Charles, writing to his brother, says: ‘You must be very kind to Harry Bennet, and communicate freely with him, for as you are sure that he is full of duty and integrity to you, so I must tell you that I shall trust him more than any about you, and cause him to be instructed in those businesses of mine, when I cannot write to you myself.’
In 1658 Sir Henry Bennet, Knight, was sent as Ambassador to Madrid. Clarendon says it was at the instigation of Lord Bristol, but at this time there was strife between the new ambassador and his former patron. Henry Bennet, with all the zeal that usually characterises a recent convert to Catholicism, was very anxious that his Royal master should make his profession to the same faith, whereas Digby, or rather the Earl of Bristol (as he had become), though himself a Roman Catholic, considered that such a step would be ruinous to Charles’s interests. Great bitterness in consequence existed between Bristol and Bennet, increased by the jealousy excited in the mind of the former with regard to the latter’s mission, being under the impression that he himself was far better fitted for the post.
Sir Henry, however, seems to have pleased most parties in his diplomatic capacity; and at the Restoration the King gave him the office of Privy Purse, and made him his constant companion. Bennet was well calculated to suit the taste of the Merry Monarch. Burnet tells us he had the art of observing the King’s humour, and hitting it off, beyond all the men of his time; and Clarendon gives us a clue to one of the reasons, when he mentions that ‘Bennet filled a principal place, to all intents and purposes, at the nightly meetings’ (alluding to the King’s jovial suppers in Lady Castlemaine’s apartments), ‘added to which, he was most lively and sparkling in conversation.’
In 1662 Charles bribed Sir Edward Nicholas to resign his Secretaryship of State (and that with a considerable sum), that he might bestow the vacant post on his favourite. The contrast between Bennet’s entire submission to the Royal will, and the honest rectitude of the Chancellor (Clarendon), increased the King’s dislike to that worthy servant of the Crown, on whose downfall Bennet rose still higher.
In 1663 he was raised to the Peerage as Lord Arlington, whereupon Clarendon threw some ridicule on the choice of the title, taken from an obscure village in Middlesex, which had once belonged to Bennet’s father, but was now in the possession of another family.
While at the head of public affairs, no measures of any importance were undertaken, with the exception of the first Dutch war.