The letter is signed by J Benet Esq, sometimes written as Benett.
The letter is addressed to the subscribers to the races at Salisbury, referred to in the letter as Sarum, and is a reply to their invitation to be the Steward of their next race meeting.
The Steward's function was and still is to ensure that the rules of racing are observed. Stewards were first officially appointed in 1771. Before then, disputes had to be settled by a vote among the subscribers to the meeting
The Benetts of Norton Bavant, a long-established Wiltshire gentry family, were distantly related to the Bennetts (or Bennetts) of Pythouse, a few of whom had sat in Parliament in the seventeenth century.
Benett’s grandfather, Thomas, of Norton Bavant, who married Etheldred, daughter of William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, purchased Pythouse in 1725 and died in 1754. His eldest surviving son, another Thomas, who controversially secured a fellowship at All Souls, Oxford in 1754 and was sheriff of Wiltshire, 1758-9, married in 1766 Frances (who died, childless, two years later), daughter of the Rev. Richard Reynolds, chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln, of Little Paxton, Huntingdonshire. With his second wife Catherine (d. 1780), whom he married in 1771, he had three sons and two daughters.
The tall and thin John Benett, whose elder brother Thomas died in 1789, evidently entered the Wiltshire yeomanry cavalry as a private soon after he came of age, as he later boasted of his long service record.
Following his father's death, 16 May 1797, he inherited, by his will of 23 July 1795, considerable wealth and properties in Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset. He resided at Pythouse, which was extensively remodelled to his own architectural specifications, and greatly expanded and improved his agricultural estates, becoming a combative proponent of tithe commutation.
His house at Norton, which was occupied by his sisters Etheldred, a pioneering geologist, and Anna Maria, an amateur botanist, was in William Cobbett’s favourite part of the country despite derisorily dubbing Benett ‘the gallon loaf man’.
The Benetts of Norton Bavant, a long-established Wiltshire gentry family, were distantly related to the Bennetts (or Bennetts) of Pythouse, a few of whom had sat in Parliament in the seventeenth century.
Benett’s grandfather, Thomas, of Norton Bavant, who married Etheldred, daughter of William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, purchased Pythouse in 1725 and died in 1754. His eldest surviving son, another Thomas, who controversially secured a fellowship at All Souls, Oxford in 1754 and was sheriff of Wiltshire, 1758-9, married in 1766 Frances (who died, childless, two years later), daughter of the Rev. Richard Reynolds, chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln, of Little Paxton, Huntingdonshire. With his second wife Catherine (d. 1780), whom he married in 1771, he had three sons and two daughters.
The tall and thin John Benett, whose elder brother Thomas died in 1789, evidently entered the Wiltshire yeomanry cavalry as a private soon after he came of age, as he later boasted of his long service record.
Following his father's death, 16 May 1797, he inherited, by his will of 23 July 1795, considerable wealth and properties in Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset. He resided at Pythouse, which was extensively remodelled to his own architectural specifications, and greatly expanded and improved his agricultural estates, becoming a combative proponent of tithe commutation.
His house at Norton, which was occupied by his sisters Etheldred, a pioneering geologist, and Anna Maria, an amateur botanist, was in William Cobbett’s favourite part of the country despite derisorily dubbing Benett ‘the gallon loaf man’.
Cobbett admitted that if Benett would give him a farm there, ‘I would freely give up all the rest of the world to the possession of whoever may get hold of it. I have hinted this to him once or twice, but I am sorry to say that he turns a deaf ear to my hinting’. Although strongly Whig in his political outlook, he had no time for radicals, condemning, for instance, the activities of Henry Hunt, an old antagonist, when supporting a loyal address to the prince regent at the Wiltshire county meeting in March 1817. Hunt, who in turn held Benett in contempt, called his speech on that occasion ‘a violent, dastardly and unmanly attack upon me’ and commented that ‘he knew that his dirty hirelings would protect him against a reply from me, and he therefore gave a-loose to a most malignant spirit’. A swaggering squire, Benett, foreman of the Wiltshire grand jury (from 1820), had a reputation for oppressing his tenants.5 The Irish poet Tom Moore, who subsequently became a friend of the family, described him in 1818 as a very haranguing-minded gentleman - his wife odious - full of airs, with a hard, grinding Tartar voice, and presuming beyond anything.
Sir
I am very sensible of the honor [sic] you & the Gentlemen intend me in offering me the stewardship of the next Sarum Race, & no consideration would induce me to decline such an offer but my being a complete stranger to horse race concerns.
Since however you are so good as to promise me assistance, of the Gentleman who are encouraged by the Racers that desire me to serve the Races I will however unequal impose on it and in proof of my reading a coming with yours & with their wishes.
J Benets Esq
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