William Benson (architect)

In 1718, he arranged to displace the aged Sir Christopher Wren as Surveyor of the King's Works, but his short time in that post was not a success.

He made a Grand Tour as a young man, which was extended to a prolonged visit in 1704–1706 to Hanover, the seat of the Elector, who was next in line to the British throne.

The following February he rented the classical Caroline Amesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, then attributed to Inigo Jones,[3] on a twenty-one-year lease, and in 1709 he set to work designing Wilbury House[4] for himself on a nearby property at Newton Tony, which he purchased that year from Hon.

In this manner Wilbury was illustrated in Colen Campbell's first volume of Vitruvius Britannicus (1715, plates 51–52), credited to Benson as inventor and builder.

[12] In 1717 he was offered in reversion the post of Auditor of the Imprests, and in 1718 he was appointed Surveyor of the King's Works in place of Sir Christopher Wren.

In achieving this appointment he had the assistance of John Aislabie, according to Nicholas Hawksmoor, who was deprived of his double post to provide places for Benson's brother.

Howard Colvin noted[14] that "Benson's surveyorship lasted for fifteen months, in the course of which he sacked his ablest subordinates, declared war on his closest colleagues, infuriated the Treasury[15] and finally brought down upon himself the wrath of the House of Lords for falsely insisting that their Chamber was in imminent danger of collapse."

Alexander Pope later ridiculed him in The Dunciad (III.321, IV.111–12) for having erected a monument to John Milton in Westminster Abbey, 1737, then having turned and honoured with a bust by Michael Rysbrack, a distinctly minor writer of Latin verses, Dr Arthur Johnston (1587–1641); in the elaborate procession attending the Goddess Dulness, Benson appeared: "On two unequal crutches propt he came, Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name" (Dunciad IV.111-12).