" This gentleman entered the Hanoverian Service in May 1788 as Second Lieutenant in the 9th Regiment of Light Dragoons, and in 1796 he joined the English Army as Cornet and Adjutant of the 3rd Dragoon Guards. During the period of his service he was present in the battle of Famars, and at the siege of Valenciennes, besides several other actions and skirmishes, in one of which he was very severely wounded by a shell, and his horse was shot under him.
" In 1803 he was appointed Deputy- Judge Advocate of the South- West District, and two years afterwards Mr. Pitt named him to succeed Colonel Beckwith as a Commissioner for inquiring into the Public Expenditure of the Military Department.
"In 1 81 2 he received from Queen Charlotte the appointment of Master of the King's Household at Windsor, and such was the admirable system introduced by him into that establishment, that, whilst he was in office, there was no one year in which a surplus revenue of some thousand pounds was not returned into the Treasury; and so satisfied was Lord Winchilsea, the then Lord Steward, with his judicious management,
that the control of this branch of his department was wholly relinquished by him to the care of Sir B. Stephenson.
" In 1 814 he was gazetted a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Hanoverian Service, and in September of that year he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Board of Works. That Board being subsequently merged in the department of Woods and Forests, Sir. B. Stephenson became one of the Commissioners of the new Board, and continued in that situation up to the period of his decease. He also held the office of Riding Forester of the New Forest, with a salary of ^^500 a y