The Division of Benares has an area of 10,431 sq. m., and comprises the districts of Benares, Mirzapur, Jaunpur, Ghazipur and Ballia. In 1901 the population was 5,069,020, showing a decrease of 6% in the decade.
See E.B. Havell, Benares (1906); M.A. Sherring, The Sacred City of the Hindus (1868).
BENBOW, JOHN (1653-1702), English admiral, the son of a tanner in Shrewsbury, was born in 1653. He went to sea when very young, and served in the navy as master’s mate and master, from 1678 to 1681. When trading to the Mediterranean in 1686 in a ship of his own he beat off a Salli pirate. On the accession of William III. he re-entered the navy as a lieutenant and was rapidly promoted. It is probable that he enjoyed the protection of Arthur Herbert, earl of Torrington, under whom he had already served in the Mediterranean. After taking part in the bombardment of St Malo (1693), and superintending the blockade of Dunkirk (1696), he sailed in 1698 for the West Indies, where he compelled the Spaniards to restore two vessels belonging to the Scottish colonists at Darien (see [Paterson, William]) which they had seized. On his return he was appointed vice-admiral, and was frequently consulted by the king. In 1701 he was sent again to the West Indies as commander-in-chief. On the 19th of August 1702, when cruising with a squadron of seven ships, he sighted, and chased, four French vessels commanded by M. du Casse near Santa Marta. The engagement is the most disgraceful episode in English naval history. Benbow’s captains were mutinous, and he was left unsupported in his flagship the “Breda.” His right leg was shattered by a chain-shot, despite which he remained on the quarter-deck till morning, when the flagrant disobedience of the captains under him, and the disabled condition of his ship, forced him reluctantly to abandon the chase. After his return to Jamaica, where his subordinates were tried by court-martial, he died of his wounds on the 4th of November 1702. A great deal of legendary matter has collected round his name, and his life is really obscure.
See Yonge’s Hist. of the British Navy, vol. i.; Campbell’s British Admirals, vol. iii.; also Owen and Blakeway’s History of Shrewsbury.
BENCE-JONES, HENRY (1814-1873), English physician and chemist, was born at Thorington Hall, Suffolk, in 1814, the son of an officer in the dragoon guards. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. Subsequently he studied medicine at St George’s hospital, and chemistry at University College, London. In 1841 he went to Giessen in Germany to work at chemistry with Liebig. Besides becoming a fellow, and afterwards senior censor, of the Royal College of Physicians, and a fellow of the Royal Society, he held the post of secretary to the Royal Institution for many years. In 1846 he was elected physician to St George’s hospital. He died in London on the 20th of April 1873. Dr Bence-Jones was a recognized authority on diseases of the stomach and kidneys. He wrote, in addition to several scientific books and a number of papers in scientific periodicals, The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870).
BENCH (an O. E. and Eng. form of a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Bank, Dan. baenk and the Eng. doublet “bank”), a long narrow wooden seat for several persons, with or without a back. While the chair was yet a seat of state or dignity the bench was ordinarily used by the commonalty. It is still extensively employed for other than domestic purposes, as in schools, churches and places of amusement. Bench or Banc, in law, originally was the seat occupied by judges in court; hence the term is used of a tribunal of justice itself, as the King’s Bench, the Common Bench, and is now applied to judges or magistrates collectively as the “judicial bench,” “bench of magistrates.” The word is also applied to any seat where a number of people sit in an official capacity, or as equivalent to the dignity itself, as “the civic bench,” the “bench of aldermen,” the “episcopal bench,” the “front bench,” i.e. that reserved for the leaders of either party in the British House of Commons. King’s Bench (q.v.) was one of the three superior courts of common law at Westminster, the others being the common pleas and the exchequer. Under the Judicature Act 1873, the court of king’s bench became the king’s bench division of the High Court of Justice. The court of common pleas was sometimes called the common bench.
Sittings in bane were formerly the sittings of one of the superior courts of Westminster for the hearing of motions, special cases, &c., as opposed to the nisi prius sittings for trial of facts, where usually only a single judge presided. By the Judicature Act 1873 the business of courts sitting in bane was transferred to divisional courts.