[1] A native of Boston, Lincolnshire, Benson was apparently educated in some religious house belonging to the Benedictine order, of which he was a member.
[3] Benson assisted John Stokesley, the Bishop of London at the christening of the Lady Elizabeth, which took place in September 1533 in the Church of the Friars Minors of the Order of St. Francis at Greenwich.
In the following year he was appointed, jointly with Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Audley, and Cromwell, to administer the oath to accept, on pain of high treason, the statute defining the succession to the crown, in the preamble of which the marriage of Queen Catharine was declared void (25 Hen.
[3] Sir Thomas More finding himself unable to take the oath without at the same time distinguishing between the preamble and the operative part of the act, Benson endeavoured to induce him to ‘change his conscience’.
More, however, refused to take the oath, was placed under arrest on Monday, 13 April 1534, Benson having the custody of him until the following Friday, when he was committed to the Tower of London.
The same year (1534) Benson defended the privilege of sanctuary claimed by the collegiate church of St. Martin's-le-Grand, which had been annexed to the abbey by Henry VII, against the corporation of London, trying to suppress what was felt to be an intolerable nuisance.
They failed, however, on this as on previous occasions, and Benson had a document drawn up and enrolled in the Court of Chancery accurately defining the extent of the privilege.
He subscribed the articles of religion formulated in 1536, the year in which he surrendered to the king the manors of Neyte (whence Knightsbridge), Hyde, now Hyde Park, Eybury, and Todington, the advowson of Chelsea, some meadows near the horse-ferry between Westminster and Lambeth, Covent Garden, and some lands at Greenwich, in exchange for Hurley Priory in Berkshire.
He remained there, however, for many years afterwards, during which the abbey became impoverished, owing to the depreciation of money and the rapacious greed of the Protector Somerset, who in 1549 secularised its appanage of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and extorted the surrender of fourteen of its manors under threat to demolish the entire structure.