Considered the "founder of historical philology", Bentley is widely credited with establishing the English school of Hellenism.

His autocratic manner and contemptuous treatment of the college fellows led to extensive controversy and litigation, but he remained in that post until his death, more than four decades later.

A fellow of the Royal Society, Bentley was interested in natural theology and the new physical sciences, subjects on which he corresponded with Isaac Newton.

Bentley was in charge of the second edition of Newton's Principia Mathematica, although he delegated most of the scientific work involved to his pupil Roger Cotes.

Richard Bentley was born at his maternal grandparents' home at Oulton near Rothwell, Leeds, West Yorkshire, in northern England.

His grandfather, Captain James Bentley,[1] is said to have suffered for the Royalist cause following the English Civil War, leaving the family in reduced circumstances.

This allowed Bentley to meet eminent scholars, have access to the best private library in England, and become familiar with Dean Stillingfleet.

During his six years as tutor, Bentley also made a comprehensive study of Greek and Latin writers, storing up knowledge which he would use later in his scholarship.

[2] The Oxford (Sheldonian) press was about to bring out an edition (the editio princeps) from the unique manuscript of the Chronographia in the Bodleian Library.

The editor, John Mill, principal of St Edmund Hall, asked Bentley to review it and make any pertinent remarks on the text.

[2] Bentley wrote the Epistola ad Johannem Millium, which is about a hundred pages long and was included at the end of the Oxford Malalas (1691).

The ease with which he restored corrupted passages, the certainty of his emendation and command over the relevant material, are in a style totally different from the careful and laborious learning of Hody, Mill or Edmund Chilmead.

In the first series of lectures ("A Confutation of Atheism"), he endeavours to present Newtonian physics in a popular form, and to frame them (especially in opposition to Hobbes) into a proof of the existence of an intelligent Creator.

[4] The University of Cambridge commissioned Bentley to obtain Greek and Latin fonts for their classical books; he had these made in Holland.

Barnes printed the epistles anyway and declared that no one could doubt their authenticity but a man who was perfrictae frontis aut judicii imminuti (boldfaced and lacking in judgment).

In 1697, William Wotton, about to bring out a second edition of his Ancient and Modern Learning, asked Bentley to write out a paper exposing the spuriousness of the Epistles of Phalaris, long a subject of academic controversy.

He is also credited by the British mathematician Rouse Ball[7] with starting the first written examinations in the West in 1702, all those prior to this being oral in nature.

[4] After ten years of stubborn but ineffectual resistance, the fellows appealed to the Visitor, the bishop of Ely (John Moore).

The college statutes required the sentence to be executed by the vice-master Richard Walker, who was a friend of Bentley and refused to act.

[4] Although he had long studied Horace, Bentley wrote his edition quickly in the end, publishing it in 1711 to gain public support at a critical period of the Trinity quarrel.

Some of his 700 or 800 emendations have been accepted, but the majority were rejected by the early 20th century as unnecessary, although scholars acknowledged they showed his wide learning.

[4] In 1716, in a letter to William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, Bentley announced his plan to prepare a critical edition of the New Testament.

He suggested that the poet John Milton had employed both an amanuensis and an editor, who were responsible for clerical errors and interpolations, but it is unclear whether Bentley believed his own position.

[12] According to the anonymous author of his biography in the Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Bentley was self-assertive and presumptuous, which alienated some people.

[20] According to the anonymous author of his biography in the Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Bentley was the first Englishman to be ranked with the great heroes of classical learning.

Where scholars had hitherto offered suggestions and conjectures, Bentley, with unlimited control over the whole material of learning, gave decisionsThe modern German school of philology recognised his genius.

Jakob Bernays says of his corrections of the Tristia, "corruptions which had hitherto defied every attempt even of the mightiest, were removed by a touch of the fingers of this British Samson".

[12] Bentley was credited with creating the English school of Hellenists, by which the 18th century was distinguished, including scholars such as Richard Dawes, Jeremiah Markland, John Taylor, Jonathan Toup, Thomas Tyrwhitt, Richard Porson, Peter Paul Dobree, Thomas Kidd and James Henry Monk.

The attacks by Alexander Pope (he was assigned a niche in The Dunciad),[22] John Arbuthnot and others demonstrated their inability to appreciate his work, as they considered textual criticism as pedantry.

[citation needed] In a university where the instruction of youth or the religious controversy of the day was the chief occupation, Bentley was unique.