Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Benhyem, Hugo de

by no contributor recorded

BENHYEM, HUGO de, or BENHAM, HUGH (d. 1282), bishop of Aberdeen, succeeded Richard Pottock in the see in 1272. After his election he went to Rome, and was consecrated by Pope Martin IV. Shortly after his return to Scotland he was made arbiter of a dispute about tithes between the clergy and the laity of the kingdom, and in a provincial council held at Perth was successful in effecting an arrangement of the difference. He died in 1282 at Loch Goul (now called Bishops Loch, in the parish of New Machar), where the bishops had their lodging before the canonry was erected. Boethius ascribes his death to sudden suffocation from catarrh, but according to another tradition he was slain in an ambuscade. He was the author of 'Provincialium Statutorum Sanctiones' and 'Novæ Episcoporum Prærogativæ.'

[Boethius's Aberdonensium Episcoporum Vitæ, fo. iii.; Dempster's Hist. Eccl. Gent. Scot. (1627), p. 105; Collections for Aberdeen (Spalding Club, 1843), i. 161, 236, 268, 467, 469; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 96.]