by emotions which he does not understand, and depicting the old courtly order of Europe on the eve of its dissolution. His character was patrician in everything but its want of repose and its insensibility to duty; too charitable to be called selfish, attached from caprice to animals, from habit to dependents, he was yet an absolute egotist. It never seemed to occur to him that his magnificent possessions in the West Indies entailed upon him the least responsibility. His misanthropy was mainly affectation, and he was less independent of the opinion of the world than he liked the world to think. Need of human sympathy made him exceedingly kind to very inferior writers who had praised his works; and the few who gained admission to his presence found him a courteous and unassuming gentleman.

most remarkable criticisms on Beckford are

[The principal authority for Beckford's life is the memoir by Cyrus Redding, published anonymously in 1859. It is an intolerable piece of book-making, being chiefly made up of extracts from Beckford's own letters, ard repetitions of what the author had previously written in magazines, but is indispensable in the absence of an authorised biography. See also the Gent. Mag., Annual Register, and Athenæum for 1844. The Lockhart's review of his letters in vol. li. of the Quarterly, and an article by O. Tiffany in vol. xc. of the North American Review. M. Stephane Mallarmé has reprinted the original French of Vathek (Paris, 1876), and thoroughly investigated the bibliography of the subject. The catalogues of Beckford's Fonthill collections, and of his library, contribute much to the appreciation of his tastes and character. The chapter on his library in Clarke's Repertorium Bibliographicum (1819) is from his own pen. The fullest account of Fonthill is that by Britton (1823), which also contains genealogical and heraldic particulars of the Beckford family.]

R. G.

BECKINGHAM, CHARLES (16991731), poet and dramatist, was born, according to the register of Merchant Taylors' School, on 25 July 1699 (ROBINSON's Register, ii. 32). His father was a linendraper in Fleet Street. Beckingham was educated at Merchant Taylors' School under Dr. Smith, and is said to have displayed 'great proficiency in his studies,' and given 'the strongest testimonials of extraordinary abilities.' Nothing in his works justifies these eulogies. On 18 Feb. 1718 'Scipio Africanus,' an historical tragedy in the regulation five acts, was produced at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. This was followed at the same house on 7 Nov. of the next year by a second work of a similar description, entitled 'Henry IV of France.' The youth of the author, and the presence of a large number of his fellow-students who had

been permitted to visit the theatre, gave some éclat to the production of the earlier work. This, however, is but an average specimen of academic labour. A chief subject of praise in contemporary writers is the manner in which the so-called unities are observed by its author. The plot is founded on a story told by Livy (xxvi. 49-50) and other classical writers concerning the restoration of a beautiful captive by Scipio Africanus to Allucius, a Spaniard. A considerable portion of the play consists of tedious love scenes, which are necessarily fictitious. Quin played Scipio. Scipio Africanus' was acted four times in all, two performances being, it is stated, for the author's benefit. It was printed in 12mo in 1718. 'Henry IV of France' deals with the jealousy of the Prince of Condé of his wife, who is in love with the king, and ends with the murder of Henry by Ravaillac at the instigation of the papal nuncio and the priests. This play was also given four times, Quin appearing as Henry IV. It was printed in 8vo in 1820. In addition to these dramas Beckingham wrote a poem on the death of Rowe, the dramatist; a second entitled 'Christ's Sufferings, translated from the Latin of Rapin,' and dedicated to the Archbishop of York; and other minor poems. He died 19 Feb. 1730-31.

[Jacob's Poetical Register; Baker, Reed, and Jones's Biographia Dramatica; Genest's Account of the English Stage.] J. K.

BECKINGHAM, ELIAS DE (d. 1305 ?), judge, was placed on the commission of justices for Middlesex in 1274, but immediately removed. At this time he seems to have held the rank of king's serjeant. He received the commission of justice of assize [for a brief account of the nature and origin of which see under BATESFORD, JOHN DE] in 1276. In 1282-3 he acted as keeper of the rolls of the common pleas, and in 1285 was appointed one of the justices of that bench. In 1289, grave complaints of the maladministration of justice and the venality of the judges being rife, a searching inquiry was instituted, and Beckingham was the only one of the five justices of the common pleas who was not dismissed for corruption. He appears to have continued in the discharge of his duties until 1305, for he was regularly summoned to parliament as a justice between 1288 and 1305. From the fact that he was no longer summoned to parliament after the latter date, it may be inferred that he died or retired before the date when parliament next met. He was interred in the church of Bottisham, in Cambridgeshire, where a monument was dedicated to his memory.

BECKINGTON or BEKYNTON, THOMAS (1390 ?-1465), bishop of Bath and Wells and lord privy seal, was a native of the Somersetshire village from which he derived his surname. His parentage is unknown, and there is no record of the date of his birth, but from the dates of his admission, first at Winchester (1404) and afterwards at New College, Oxford (1406), it is presumed to have been about 1390. He was admitted a fellow of New College in 1408, and retained his fellowship twelve years. He took the degree of LL.D. In 1420, when he resigned his fellowship, he entered the service of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester; from which time, apparently, church preferments began to flow in upon him. The rectory of St. Leonard's, near Hastings, and the vicarage of Sutton Courtney, in Berks, were perhaps not among the first. Indeed, there are grounds for supposing the former to have been given him in 1439. He had become archdeacon of Buckinghamshire, it appears, before the death of Henry V in 1422, though a later date is given in Le Neve; and in April next year we find him collated to the prebend of Bilton in York, which he exchanged for that of Warthill in the same cathedral four months later. He was appointed to a canonry in Wells in 1439, and was also master of St. Katherine's Hospital, near the Tower of London. But early in 1423 he was already dean of the Arches, in which capacity he assisted at the trial of the heretic William Tailor; and in Nov. 1428 he was appointed, along with the celebrated canonist, William Lyndewood, receiver of the subsidy granted by the lower house of convocation for the expenses of the prosecution of William Russell, another suspected heretic. He was prolocutor of convocation at least as early as 1433, and so continued till May 1438. During the session of 1434 he was commissioned by Archbishop Chichele to draw up, along with others, certain comminatory articles to be proclaimed by the clergy in their parishes four times a year. Meanwhile he had been engaged in several public capacities. In February 1432 he had been nominated to go on embassy to France with Langdon, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Henry Bromflete, to negotiate a peace; but the envoys do not appear to have left till December following, when Sir John Fastolf was substituted for Sir Henry Bromflete. It has been erroneously stated that he was also sent to the

congress at Arras in 1435; but it is certain that he was a member of the great embassy sent to Calais in 1439 to treat with the French ambassadors. Of this embassy he has left a journal, in which he styles himself the king's secretary-an office probably conferred upon him just before, though he appears to have acted in that capacity, at least occasionally, for about two years previously. After his return from this embassy he was for three or four years in close attendance upon the king, and speaks of himself at one time as being his reader nearly every day.

In the spring of 1442 an embassy was sent to England by John IV, count of Armagnac, who desired to offer one of his daughters in marriage to young King Henry VI. They were well received, and three officers of the royal household, of whom Beckington was one, were immediately despatched in return to the court of Armagnac fully empowered to contract the proposed alliance. Their commission bore date 28 May 1442, and on 5 June they set out from Windsor. An interesting diary, written by one of Beckington's suite, describes their progress to the west coast, where they took shipping at Plymouth, the letters and messages that overtook them on the road, the voyage and arrival at Bordeaux, where they received alarming news of the progress of the enemy and the capture of Sir Thomas Rempstone, seneschal of Bordeaux. They nevertheless continued for some time to prosecute the object of their mission; but the state of the country and the severity of the season interposed such difficulties in the way that they thought it best to return in the beginning of the following year. Beckington landed again at Falmouth on 10 Feb., met the king ten days later at Maidenhead, and on the 21st arrived in London, where he supped with the lord mayor. Next day he visited Greenwich with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. On the 23rd he heard mass at his own hospital of St. Katherine's, dined with the lord treasurer, and supped again with the lord mayor. On Sunday the 26th he rejoined the king at Shene, and resumed his duties as secretary; soon after which he was appointed lord privy seal.

The chief effect of this embassy and of its return was to impress upon the government at home the necessity of taking more active steps to avert-as they succeeded in doing for a few years-the threatened loss of Guienne. The marriage negotiation was a failure. Even the artist employed, according to their instructions, to take likenesses of the count of Armagnac's three daughters, that the king might choose which of them he preferred, was

unable to do his work: the frost had congealed his colours when he had barely completed one portrait, and the envoys saw good reason to return home without waiting for the other two. But the result nowise tended to diminish the influence of Beckington, who not only, as we have seen, continued to receive new marks of the king's favour, but had ere this made friends at the court of Rome as well; by whose means, in that same year 1443, he was rather too precipitately nominated by the pope to the see of Salisbury, which it was supposed Bishop Ascough would vacate in order to be promoted to the see of Canterbury. But, as Ascough declined to leave Salisbury, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, was elevated to the primacy, and Beckington was made bishop of Bath in Stafford's room. His agent at Rome meanwhile had unluckily paid into the papal treasury a considerable sum for the firstfruits of Salisbury, and Beckington obtained a letter from the king himself, directing him to get it, if possible, charged to the account of the see of Bath. How the matter was settled does not appear; but on 13 Oct. Beckington was consecrated bishop of Bath and Wells by William Alnwick, bishop of Lincoln. The rite was performed in the old collegiate church at Eton, and Beckington the same day celebrated mass in pontificalibus under a tent within the new church, then not half built, and held his inaugural banquet within the college buildings. As might be expected in one who was so greatly in the confidence of the royal founder, he had taken a strong interest in the new college from the first, and one of his latest acts as archdeacon of Buckinghamshire was to exempt the provost from his own jurisdiction, placing him directly under the bishop of Lincoln as visitor and ordinary.

As bishop of Bath he had in 1445 a controversy with Nicholas Frome, abbot of Glastonbury, an old man who, tenacious of the privileges of his monastery, resented episcopal visitation, and whom Beckington, with unseemly severity, taunted with the infirmities of age. He had a much more pleasing correspondence with Thomas Chandler, who was first warden of Winchester College, then warden of New College, Oxford, and afterwards chancellor of Wells, who looked up to him as a patron. But on the whole it may be said that his personal history, after he became bishop, is uninteresting. His name occurs as trier of petitions in parliament from 1444 to 1453, but no particular act is recorded of him. On 18 June 1452 he obtained an exemption from further attendance in parliament on account of his age and

infirmities-a privilege which Edward IV confirmed to him in 1461. He died at Wells on 14 Jan. 1465, and was buried in a fine tomb, built by himself in his lifetime, in the south aisle of the choir. In our own day, during some repairs of the cathedral in 1850, this tomb was opened, and the remains of his skeleton were inspected. It was that of a tall man with a well-formed skull.

Active as his life was, and interesting also in a literary point of view, from his correspondence with learned men both in England and at Rome, Beckington's chief claim upon the regard of posterity is the munificence with which he adorned with fine buildings his cathedral city of Wells. Besides rebuilding the episcopal palace, he supplied the town with a public conduit and fountain, and erected the close of the vicars choral and fifteen tenements in the market place. His curious rebus, a flaming beacon (commonly spelt bekyn in those days) and a tun or barrel, is seen carved in various quarters, not only at Wells, but at Winchester and in Lincoln College, Oxford. His bequests in his will were princely, and show his strong attachment, not only to the colleges and places of education, but to all the different churches with which he had been connected.

[Memoir by Nicolas, prefixed to Journal of an Embassy to the Count of Armagnac; Official Correspondence of Bekynton, edited by G. Williams, B.D., in Rolls Series, in the introduction to which are some important corrections of Nicolas; Chandler's Life of Waynflete.] J. G. BECKINSALL, JOHN. [See BEKIN

SAU.]

BECKLEY, WILLIAM (d. 1438), Carmelite, was born in Kent, probably in the neighbourhood of Sandwich, where he appears to have entered the order of the Carmelites in early life. While still young he proceeded to Cambridge, where the Carmelites had had a house since the year 1291. Here he seems to have taken his doctor's degree in divinity, and to have established a considerable reputation as a theologian. Bale praises his modesty of speech, and his firm proceedings against evildoers in all the assemblies (conventibus') over which he presided. This incidental remark would alone prove him to have been a man of mark among the English Carmelites, even without the next sentence, in which we are told that while Beckley was engaged in the king's business Thomas Walden used to protect his interests at Cambridge against the complaints of his fellow-doctors there. Tanner makes mention of a letter from the chancellor and university of Cambridge

to the provincial chapter of the Carmelites at Northampton, referring to a charge that had been brought against Beckley for his absence from the university 'anno primo regentiæ,' for which offence he had been suspended. He also notices Walden's reply to this letter. In his old age, after having spent many years at Cambridge, Beckley seems to have withdrawn to his native place, Sandwich, where, according to Bale, he became head of the Carmelite friary, and devoted the remainder of his life to study. On his death, which occurred in 1438, he was buried in the last-mentioned town, and the Latin verses inscribed upon his tomb, and probably written by himself, are preserved in Weever's Funeral Monuments.' Dempster has claimed Beckley as a Scotch monk, and gives several details of his life, how he was exiled from Scotland and took up his abode in France, whence he was recalled by James III, but apparently preferred to remain in England when once he set foot in that country on his return journey. But the authorities to whom Dempster appeals, 'Gilbert Brown' (d. 1612), and P. M. Thomas Sarracenus, an ex-professor of Bologna, can hardly be accepted as sufficient testimony for these statements in the face of so much contrary evidence. The tradition of a residence in France may, however, contain some degree of truth when we consider Bale's plain statement as to Beckley's being employed in royal business, and his subsequent statement that Beckley delivered declamations to the nobility and chief officers in many parts of England, and in Calais also. The chief works assigned to this author are similar in their titles to those of most medieval theologians, and consist of 'Quodlibeta,'' Quæstiones Ordinariæ,' 'Conciones Variæ,' and one which, had it been preserved, might perhaps have been of some slight interest, entitled 'De Fraterculorum

Decimis.'

division commanded by Lieutenant-general Earl Percy (Records of the 37th Regiment). He obtained his lieutenancy on 7 July 1775, his company on 2 July 1777, and the rank of major on 30 Nov. 1781. From 1776 to 1782 he bore a prominent part in the contest between England and her American colonies, during which he commanded in several surprises of the enemy and in storms and captures of important places, including those of Elizabeth Town and Brunswick in New Jersey.

From 1787 to the end of 1791, during which time no British minister was accredited to the United States, he was entrusted with an important and confidential mission. On 18 Nov. 1790 he obtained the rank of lieutenant-colonel, that of colonel on 21 Aug. 1795, major-general on 18 June 1798, and of lieutenant-general on 30 Oct. 1805. In April 1797 he was appointed governor of Bermuda, and in the following July commandant of the troops in that island. In October 1804 he became governor of St. Vincent, and on 8 Oct. 1808 governor of Barbadoes, with the command of the forces in the Windward and Leeward Caribee islands. England being then at war with France, he organised an expedition for the conquest of the island of Martinique, and, having been reinforced by the 7th, 8th, and 23rd regiments under Lieutenant-general Sir George Prevost, he sailed from Carlisle Bay on 28 Jan. 1809, arrived off Martinique on the 29th, landed on the 30th, and completed the conquest of the island on 24 July. The French eagles then taken were sent home by him, and were the first ever seen in England. On 14 April 1809 the thanks of the House of Commons, and on the 17th those of the House of Lords, were voted to Lieutenant-general Beckwith for his able and gallant conduct in effecting with such signal rapidity the entire conquest of the island of Martinique.' On 1 May he was created a knight of the Bath.

On 22 Jan. 1810, having organised a second expedition, he sailed for Guadaloupe, the last possession of the French in that part of the world, landed on the 28th, and on 5 Feb. the conquest of the island was completed.. Returning to Barbadoes on 29 July 1810, he remained there till June 1814, when, after nine years' service in the West Indies, he obtained permission to return to England. The last bill presented to him by the legislature of the island was a vote for a service of plate to him. This bill, gentlemen,' he said, 'is the only one from which I must withhold my consent.' He sailed from Barbadoes on 21 June. After his departure a vote of 2,500l. was passed for a service of

plate to him. It bore the following inscription: This service of plate was presented to General Sir George Beckwith, K.B., late Governor of Barbadoes, by the legislature of the island, as a sincere mark of the high regard and esteem in which he has been and will always continue to be held by every inhabitant of Barbadoes. A.D. 1814."

Sir George Beckwith's military services were further recognised by the king conferring on him armorial distinctions, Issuant from a mural crown, a dexter arm embowed, encircled with a wreath of laurel, the hand grasping an eagle, or French standard, the staff broken.' In October 1816 he was appointed to the command of the forces in Ireland, which he retained till March 1820, and died in his house in Half Moon Street in London on 20 March 1823, in the seventieth year of his age.

[Gent. Mag. xciii. part i. 372; Schombergh's History of Barbadoes, p. 373; Annual Register, 1809, li. 488; Records of the 37th Regiment; Army List.] A. S. B.

BECKWITH, JOHN CHARLES (17891862), a distinguished Peninsular officer and in later life the benevolent missionary to the Waldenses, was the grandson of Majorgeneral John Beckwith, and nephew of the generals, Sir George [q. v.] and Sir Thomas Sydney Beckwith [q. v.]. His father, like his four brothers, had held a commission in the army, but had soon resigned it on his marriage with Miss Haliburton of Halifax in Nova Scotia (a sister of Judge Haliburton), and had settled in that colony. Charles Beckwith was born 2 Oct. 1789, and obtained an ensigncy through his uncle's influence in the 50th regiment in 1803. In 1804 he exchanged into the 95th or rifle regiment, of which his uncle, Sydney Beckwith, was lieutenantcolonel. He became lieutenant in 1805, and accompanied his regiment to Hanover, to Denmark, where he was present at Kioge, and to Portugal. He was with the 95th all through the retreat of Sir John Moore to Corunna, and became captain in 1808. He was engaged with the 2nd battalion of his regiment in the Walcheren expedition, and afterwards accompanied it to Portugal in the winter of 1810, when he found Lord Wellington's army in the lines of Torres Vedras, and his uncle, Sydney Beckwith, in command of a brigade. He was present with the light division in all the engagements which took place with Masséna's retiring army in the spring of 1811, at Pombal, Redinha, Condeixa, Foz d'Aronce, and Sabugal. In 1812, after his uncle had gone to England for his health, he was appointed by Brigadier

general Andrew Barnard, who had succeeded him, brigade-major to the 1st brigade of the celebrated light division, and was present in that capacity at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, and at the battles of Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, the Nivelle, the Nive, and Orthes. His eminent services drew upon him the repeated notice both of Lord Wellington and of General Alten, who had succeeded Craufurd in the command of the light division, and he was appointed deputy assistant quartermastergeneral to the division. In this higher capacity he was present at the battle of Toulouse, and in 1814, at the conclusion of the war, he was made major by brevet. In 1815 he was appointed in the same capacity to Picton's division in the Netherlands, and was present at the battle of Waterloo, where he lost his leg, and after which he was promoted lieutenant-colonel and made a C.B. The loss of his leg made it impossible for him to expect active employment, and in 1820 he went on half-pay.

He had been but twenty-six years old at the battle of Waterloo, and was still but a young man when he retired, and hardly knew to what occupation a one-legged man could turn, when he happened one day in 1827, while waiting in the library of Apsley House, to look into Dr. Gilly's book on the Waldenses. He was so much interested that in the same year he paid a visit to the valleys of Piedmont. The past history of the people and their then condition of squalor and ignorance so worked upon his nature that he determined to settle among them, and, taking a house called La Torre, lived among them during the last thirty-five years of his life. His two main aims were to educate the people and to arouse in them once more the old evangelical faith which had first attracted his fancy. To educate them he established no less than 120 schools in the district, all of which he himself perpetually inspected, and the onelegged English general was well known and much loved throughout the Italian valleys. The greatness of his services was recognised by King Charles Albert of Sardinia, who made him a knight of the order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus in 1848, and he further sealed his life to his work by marrying a Waldensian girl, named Caroline Valle, in 1850. Nevertheless he kept up his communications with England, and frequently corresponded with Dr. Gilly and others interested in the Waldenses. An especially interesting letter from him to Sir William Napier is published in Napier's 'Life,' in which he acknowledges the receipt of a copy of the 'History of the Peninsular War,' and