Chapter IV: ECAUDATA (22).--Frogs and toads. Four limbs and no tail. Radius (15)

BECKET, THOMAS (c. 1118-1170), by his contemporaries more commonly called Thomas of London, English chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury under Henry II., was born about the year 1118 in London. His mother was a native of Caen; his father, who came of a family of small Norman landowners, had been a citizen of Rouen, but migrated to London before the birth of Thomas, and held at one time the dignified office of portreeve, although he ended his life in straitened circumstances. The young Thomas received an excellent education. At the age of ten he was put to school with the canons of Merton priory in Surrey. Later he spent some time in the schools of London, which enjoyed at that time a high reputation, and finally studied theology at Paris. Returning at the age of twenty-two he was compelled, through the misfortunes of his parents, to become a notary in the service of a wealthy kinsman, Osbert Huit Deniers, who was of some importance in London politics. About 1142 a family friend brought Thomas under the notice of Archbishop Theobald, of whose household he at once became an inmate. He accompanied the primate to Rome in 1143, and also to the council of Reims (1148), which Theobald attended in defiance of a prohibition from the king. It appears to have been at some time between the dates of these two journeys that he visited Bologna and Auxerre, and began those studies in the canon law to which he was in no small degree indebted for his subsequent advancement and misfortunes. Although the bent of his mind was legal, he never made himself an expert jurist; but he had the art of turning his knowledge, such as it was, to excellent account. In 1151 he was sent to Rome by the archbishop with instructions to dissuade the Curia from sanctioning the coronation of Stephen's eldest son Eustace. It is said that Thomas distinguished himself by the ability with which he executed his commission; in any case it gave him a claim on the gratitude of the Angevin party which was not forgotten. In 1154 he was promoted to be archdeacon of Canterbury, after first taking deacon's orders. In the following year Henry II., at the primate's recommendation, bestowed on him the important office of chancellor. In this capacity Thomas controlled the issue of royal writs and the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage; but it was more important for his future that he had ample opportunities of exercising his personal fascination upon a prince who was comparatively inexperienced, and thirteen or fourteen years his junior. He became Henry's bosom friend and was consulted in all affairs of state. It had been the hope of Theobald that Becket's influence would be exercised to support the extensive privileges which the Church had wrested from Stephen. But the chancellor, although preserving friendly relations with his old patron, subordinated the interests of the Church to those of his new master. Under his administration the Church was severely taxed for the prosecution of Henry's foreign wars; and the chancellor incurred the reproach "of plunging his sword into the bowels of his mother." Like Wolsey he identified himself with the military aspirations of his sovereign. It was Thomas who organized the Toulouse campaign of 1159; even in the field he made himself conspicuous by commanding a company of knights, directing the work of devastation, and superintending the conduct of the war after the king had withdrawn his presence from the camp. When there was war with France upon the Norman border, the chancellor acted as Henry's representative; and on one occasion engaged in single combat and unhorsed a French knight of reputation. Later it fell to his part to arrange the terms of peace with France. He discharged the duties of an envoy with equal magnificence and dexterity; the treaty of May 1160, which put an end to the war, was of his making.

In 1162 he was transferred to a new sphere of action. Henry bestowed on him the see of Canterbury, left vacant by the death of Theobald. The appointment caused some murmurs; since Becket, at the time when it was made, was still a simple deacon. But it had been desired by Theobald as the one means of averting an attack on clerical privileges which had been impending almost since the accession of Henry II.; and the bishops accepted it in silence. Henry on his side looked to find in Becket the archbishop a coadjutor as loyal as Becket the archdeacon; and anticipated that the Church would once more be reduced to that state of dependence in which she had stood during the latter years of Henry I. Becket, however, disappointed all the conflicting expectations excited by his appointment. He did not allow himself to be made the king's tool; nor on the other hand did he attempt to protect the Church by humouring the king in ordinary matters. He devoted himself to ascetic practices, confined himself to the society of churchmen, and resigned the chancellorship in spite of a papal dispensation (procured by the king) which authorized him to hold that office concurrently with the primacy. By nature a violent partisan, the archbishop now showed himself the uncompromising champion of his order and his see. Hence he was on the worst of terms with the king before a year had elapsed. They came into open conflict at the council of Woodstock (July 1163), when Becket successfully opposed the king's proposal that a land-tax, known as the sheriff's aid, which formed part of that official's salary, should be henceforth paid into the Exchequer. But there were more serious differences in the background. Becket had not shrunk from excommunicating a tenant in chief who had encroached upon the lands of Canterbury, and had protected against the royal courts a clerk named Philip de Brois who was charged with an assault upon a royal officer. These disputes involved questions of principle which had long occupied Henry's attention, and Becket's defiant attitude was answered by the famous Constitutions of Clarendon (q.v.), in which the king defined, professedly according to ancient use and custom, the relations of Church and State. Becket and the bishops were required to give these constitutions their approval. Henry's demands were more defensible in substance than might be supposed from the manner in which he pressed them on the bishops. On the most burning question, that of criminous clerks, he offered a compromise. He was willing that the accused should be tried in the courts Christian provided that the punishment of the guilty were left to the lay power. Becket's opposition rested upon a casuistic interpretation of the canon law, and an extravagant conception of the dignity attaching to the priesthood; he showed, moreover, a disposition to quibble, to equivocate, and to make promises which he had no intention of fulfilling. His conduct may be excused on the ground that the bishops were subjected to unwarrantable intimidation. But when he renounced his promise to observe the constitutions his conduct was reprobated by the other bishops, although approved by the pope. It was fortunate for Becket's reputation that Henry punished him for his change of front by a systematic persecution in the forms of law. The archbishop was thus enabled to invoke the pope's assistance, and to quit the country with some show of dignity.

Becket fled to France in November 1164. He at once succeeded in obtaining from Alexander III. a formal condemnation of the constitutions. But Alexander, a fugitive from Italy and menaced by an alliance of the emperor with an antipope, was indisposed to take extreme measures against Henry; and six years elapsed before the king found himself definitely confronted with the choice between an interdict and a surrender. For the greater part of this time the archbishop resided at the Burgundian monastery of Pontigny, constantly engaged in negotiations with Alexander, whose hand he desired to force, and with Henry, from whom he hoped to extract an unconditional submission. In 1166 Becket received from the pope a commission to publish what censures he thought fit; of which he at once availed himself to excommunicate the king's principal counsellors. In 1169 he took the same step against two of the royalist bishops. In more sweeping measures, however, the pope refused to support him, until in 1170 Henry infringed the rights of Canterbury by causing Archbishop Roger of York to crown the young king. In that year the threats of the pope forced Henry to a reconciliation which took place later at Freteval on the 22nd of July. It was a hollow truce, since the subject of the constitutions was not mentioned; and Thomas returned to England with the determination of riding roughshod over the king's supporters. If he had not given a definite pledge to forgive the bishops who had taken part in the young king's coronation, he had at least raised expectations that he would overlook all past offences. But the archbishop prevailed upon the pope to suspend the bishops, and before his return published papal letters which, in announcing these sentences, spoke of the constitutions as null and void. It was only to be expected that such a step, which was virtually a declaration of war against the king, should arouse in him the strongest feelings of resentment. The archbishop's murder, perpetrated within a month of his return to England (29th December 1170), was, however, the work of over zealous courtiers and regretted by no one more than Henry.

Becket was canonized in 1172. Within a short time his shrine at Canterbury became the resort of innumerable pilgrims. Plenary indulgences were given for a visit to the shrine, and an official register was kept to record the miracles wrought by the relics of the saint. The shrine was magnificently adorned with the gold and silver and jewels offered by the pious. It was plundered by Henry VIII., to whom the memory of Becket was specially obnoxious; but the reformers were powerless to expunge the name of the saint from the Roman calendar, on which it still remains. Even to those who are in sympathy with the principles for which he fought, the posthumous reputation of Becket must appear strangely exaggerated. It is evident that in the course of his long struggle with the state he fell more and more under the dominion of personal motives. At the last he fought not so much for an idea as for the humiliation of an opponent by whom he had been ungenerously treated. William of Newburgh appears to express the verdict of the most impartial contemporaries when he says that the bishop was _zelo justitiae fervidus, utrum autem plene secundum scientiam novit Deus_: "burning with zeal for justice, but whether altogether according to wisdom God knows."

AUTHORITIES.--_Original:_--The correspondence of Becket and most of
the contemporary biographies are collected by J.C. Robertson in
_Materials for the History of Thomas Becket_ (7 vols., Rolls Series,
1875-1885). See also the _Vie de Saint Thomas_, by Garnier de Pont
Sainte Maxence (ed. Hippeau, Paris, 1859). For the chronology of the
controversy see Eyton's _Itinerary of Henry II._

_Modern:_--Morris, _Life and Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket_ (London,
1885); Lhuillier, _Saint Thomas de Cantorbery_ (2 vols., Paris,
1891-1892); J.C. Robertson, _Becket_ (London, 1859); F.W. Maitland,
_Roman Canon Law in the Church of England_, c. iv.; J.A. Froude in his
_Short Studies_, vol. iv., and Freeman in his _Historical Essays_
(1871), give noteworthy but conflicting appreciations.
(H. W. C. D.)

BECKFORD, WILLIAM (1760-1844), English author, son of Alderman William Beckford (1709-1770), was born on the 1st of October 1760. His father was lord mayor of London in 1762 and again in 1769; he was a famous supporter of John Wilkes, and on his monument in the Guildhall were afterwards inscribed the words of his manly and outspoken reproof to George III. on the occasion of the City of London address to the king in 1770. At the age of eleven young Beckford inherited a princely fortune from his father. He married Lady Margaret Gordon in 1783, and spent his brief married life in Switzerland. After his wife's death (1786) he travelled in Spain and Portugal, and wrote his _Portuguese Letters_ (published 1834, 1835), which rank with his best work. He afterwards returned to England, and after selling his old house, Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, began to build a magnificent residence there, on which he expended in about eighteen years the sum of L273,000. His eccentricities, together with the strict seclusion in which he lived, gave rise to scandal, probably unjustified. In 1822 he sold his house, together with its splendid library and pictures, to John Farquhar, and soon after one of the towers, 260 ft. high, fell, destroying part of the villa in the ruins. Beckford erected another lofty structure on Lansdowne Hill, near Bath, where he continued to reside till his death in 1844. His first work, _Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters_ (1780) was a slight, sarcastic _jeu d'esprit_. In 1782 he wrote in French his oriental romance, _The History of the Caliph Vathek_, which appeared in English, translated by the Rev. Samuel Henley, in 1786 and has taken its place as one of the finest productions of luxuriant imagination.

Beckford's wealth and large expenditure, his position as a collector and patron of letters (he bought Gibbon's library at Lausanne), his literary industry, and his reputation as author of _Vathek_, make him an interesting figure in literary history. He had a seat in parliament from 1784 to 1793, and again from 1806 to 1820. He left two daughters, the eldest of whom was married to the 10th duke of Hamilton.

Cyrus Redding's _Memoir_ (1859) is the only full biography, but
prolix; see Dr R. Garnett's introduction to his edition of _Vathek_
(1893).

BECKINGTON (or BEKYNTON), THOMAS (c. 1390-1465), English statesman and prelate, was born at Beckington in Somerset, and was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford. Having entered the church he held many ecclesiastical appointments, and became dean of the Arches in 1423; then devoting his time to secular affairs he was sent on an embassy to Calais in 1439, and to John IV., count of Armagnac, in 1442. At this time Beckington was acting as secretary to Henry VI., and soon after his return in 1443 he was appointed lord privy seal and bishop of Bath and Wells. The bishop erected many buildings in Wells, and died there on the 14th of January 1465. The most important results of Beckington's missions to France were one Latin journal, written by himself, referring to the embassy to Calais; and another, written by one of his attendants, relating to the journey to Armagnac.

Beckington's own journal is published in the _Proceedings of the Privy
Council_, vol. v., edited by N.H. Nicolas (1835); and the other
journal in the _Official Correspondence of Thomas Bekynton_, edited by
G. Williams for the Rolls Series (1872), which contains many
interesting letters. This latter journal has been translated into
English by N.H. Nicolas (1828). See G.G. Perry, "Bishop Beckington and
Henry VI.," in the _English Historical Review_ (1894).

BECKMANN, JOHANN (1739-1811), German scientific author, was born on the 4th of June 1739 at Hoya in Hanover, where his father was postmaster and receiver of taxes. He was educated at Stade and the university of Gottingen. The death of his mother in 1762 having deprived him of his means of support, he went in 1763 on the invitation of the pastor of the Lutheran community, Anton Friedrich Busching, the founder of the modern historic statistical method of geography, to teach natural history in the Lutheran academy, St Petersburg. This office he relinquished in 1765, and travelled in Denmark and Sweden, where he studied the methods of working the mines, and made the acquaintance of Linnaeus at Upsala. In 1766 he was appointed extraordinary professor of philosophy at Gottingen. There he lectured on political and domestic economy with such success that in 1770 he was appointed ordinary professor. He was in the habit of taking his students into the workshops, that they might acquire a practical as well as a theoretical knowledge of different processes and handicrafts. While thus engaged he determined to trace the history and describe the existing condition of each of the arts and sciences on which he was lecturing, being perhaps incited by the _Bibliothecae_ of Albrecht von Haller. But even Beckmann's industry and ardour were unable to overtake the amount of study necessary for this task. He therefore confined his attention to several practical arts and trades; and to these labours we owe his _Beitrage zur Geschichte der Erfindungen_ (1780-1805), translated into English as the _History of Inventions_--a work in which he relates the origin, history and recent condition of the various machines, utensils, &c., employed in trade and for domestic purposes. This work entitles Beckmann to be regarded as the founder of scientific technology, a term which he was the first to use in 1772. In 1772 Beckmann was elected a member of the Royal Society of Gottingen, and he contributed valuable scientific dissertations to its proceedings until 1783, when he withdrew from all further share in its work. He died on the 3rd of February 1811. Other important works of Beckmann are _Entwurf einer allgemeinen Technologie_ (1806); _Anleitung zur Handelswissenschaft_ (1789); _Vorbereitung zur Warenkunde_ (1795-1800); _Beitrage zur Okonomie, Technologie, Polizei- und, Kameralwissenschaft_ (1777-1791).

BECKWITH, JAMES CARROLL (1852-), American portrait-painter, was born at Hannibal, Missouri, on the 23rd of September 1852. He studied in the National Academy of Design, New York City, of which he afterwards became a member, and in Paris (1873-1878) under Carolus Duran. Returning to the United States in 1878, he gradually became a prominent figure in American art. He took an active part in the formation of the Fine Arts Society, and was president of the National Free Art League, which attempted to secure the repeal of the American duty on works of art. Among his portraits are those of W.M. Chase (1882), of Miss Jordan (1883), of Mark Twain, T.A. Janvier, General Schofield and William Walton. He decorated one of the domes of the Manufactures Building at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

BECKWITH, SIR THOMAS SYDNEY (1772-1831), British general, was the son of Major-General John Beckwith, who was colonel of the 20th regiment (Lancashire Fusiliers) in the charge at Minden. In 1791 he entered the 71st regiment (then commanded by Colonel David Baird), in which he served in India and elsewhere until 1800, when he obtained a company in Colonel Coote Manningham's experimental regiment of riflemen, shortly afterwards numbered as the 95th Rifles and now called the Rifle Brigade. In 1802 he was promoted major, and in the following year lieutenant-colonel. Beckwith was one of the favourite officers of Sir John Moore in the famous camp of Shorncliffe, and aided that general in the training of the troops which afterwards became the Light Division. In 1806 he served in the expedition to Hanover, and in 1807 in that which captured Copenhagen. In 1806 the Rifles were present at Vimeira, and in the campaign of Sir John Moore they bore the brunt of the rearguard fighting. Beckwith took part in the great march of Craufurd to the field of Talavera, in the advanced guard fights on the Coa in 1810 and in the campaign in Portugal. On the formation of the Light Division he was given a brigade command in it. After the brilliant action of Sabugal, Beckwith had to retire for a time from active service, but the Rifles and the brigade he had trained and commanded added to their fame on every subsequent battlefield. In 1812 he went to Canada as assistant quartermaster-general, and he took part in the war against the United States. In 1814 he became major-general, and in 1815 was created K.C.B. In 1827 he was made colonel commandant of the Rifle Brigade. He went to India as commander-in-chief at Bombay in 1829, and was promoted lieutenant-general in the following year. He died on the 15th of January 1831 at Mahableshwar.

His elder brother, Sir GEORGE BECKWITH (1753-1823), distinguished himself as a regimental officer in the American War of Independence, and served subsequently in high administrative posts and in numerous successful military operations in the West Indies during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. He was made a K.B. for his capture of Martinique in 1809, and attained the full rank of general in 1814. Sir George Beckwith commanded the forces in Ireland, 1816-1820. He died in London on the 20th of March 1823.

Their nephew, Major-General JOHN CHARLES BECKWITH (1789-1862), joined the 50th regiment in 1803, exchanging in 1804 into the 95th Rifles, with which regiment he served in the Peninsular campaigns of 1808-10. He was subsequently employed on the staff of the Light Division, and he was repeatedly mentioned in despatches, becoming in 1814 a brevet-major, and after the battle of Waterloo (in which he lost a leg) lieutenant-colonel and C.B. In 1820 he left active service. Seven years later an accident drew his attention to the Waldenses, whose past history and present condition influenced him so strongly that he settled in the valleys of Piedmont. The rest of his life was spent in the self-imposed task of educating the Waldenses, for whom he established and maintained a large number of schools, and in reviving the earlier faith of the people. In 1848 King Charles Albert made him a knight of the order of St Maurice and St Lazarus. He was promoted colonel in the British army in 1837 and major-general in 1846. He died on the 19th of July 1862 at La Torre, Piedmont.

BECKX, PIERRE JEAN (1795-1887), general of the Society of Jesus, was born at Sichem in Belgium on the 8th of February 1795, and entered the novitiate of the order at Hildesheim in 1819. His first important post was as procurator for the province of Austria, 1847; next year he became rector of the Jesuit college at Louvain, and, after serving as secretary to the provincials of Belgium and Austria, was elected head of the order in 1853. His tenure of office was marked by an increased zeal for missions in Protestant lands, and by the removal of the society's headquarters from Rome to Fiesole near Florence in 1870. His chief literary work was the often-translated _Month of Mary_ (Vienna, 1843). He retired in September 1883, being succeeded by Anthony M. Anderledy, a Swiss, who had seen service in the United States. He died at Rome on the 4th of March 1887.

BECQUE, HENRY FRANCOIS (1837-1899), French dramatist, was born on the 9th of April 1837 in Paris. He wrote the book of an opera _Sardanapale_ in imitation of Lord Byron for the music of M. Victorin Joncieres in 1867, but his first important work, _Michel Pauper_, appeared in 1870. The importance of this sombre drama was first realized when it was revived at the Odeon in 1886. _Les Corbeaux_ (1882) established Becque's position as an innovator, and in 1885 he produced his most successful play, _La Parisienne_. Becque produced little during the last years of his life, but his disciples carried on the tradition he had created. He died in May 1899.

See his _Querelles litteraires_ (1890), and _Souvenirs d'un auteur
dramatique_ (1895), consisting chiefly of reprinted articles in which
he does not spare his opponents. His _Theatre complet_ (3 vols., 1899)
includes _L'Enfant prodigue_ (Vaudeville Theatre, 6th of Nov. 1868);
_Michel Pauper_ (Theatre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, 17th of June 1870);
_L'Enlevement_ (Vaudeville, 18th of Nov. 1871); _La Navette_ (Gymnase,
15th of Nov. 1878); _Les Honnetes Femmes_ (Gymnase, 1st of Jan. 1880);
_Les Corbeaux_ (Comedie Francaise, 14th of Sept. 1882); _La
Parisienne_ (Theatre de la Renaissance, 7th of Feb. 1885).

BECQUER, GUSTAVO ADOLFO (1836-1870), Spanish poet and romance-writer, was born at Seville on the 17th of February 1836. Left an orphan at an early age, he was educated by his godmother, refused to adopt any profession, and drifted to Madrid, where he obtained a small post in the civil service. He was dismissed for carelessness, became an incorrigible Bohemian, and earned a precarious living by translating foreign novels; he died in great poverty at Madrid on the 22nd of December 1870. His works were published posthumously in 1873. In such prose tales as _El Rayo de Luna_ and _La Mujer de piedra_, Becquer is manifestly influenced by Hoffmann, and as a poet he has analogies with Heine. He dwells in a fairyland of his own, crooning a weird elfin music which has no parallel in Spanish; his work is unfinished and unequal, but it is singularly free from the rhetoric characteristic of his native Andalusia, and its lyrical ardour is of a beautiful sweetness and sincerity.

BECQUEREL, the name of a French family, several members of which have been distinguished in chemical and physical research.

ANTOINE CESAR BECQUEREL (1788-1878), was born at Chatillon sur Loing on the 8th of March 1788. After passing through the Ecole Polytechnique he became _ingenieur-officier_ in 1808, and saw active service with the imperial troops in Spain from 1810 to 1812, and again in France in 1814. He then resigned from the army and devoted the rest of his life to scientific investigation. His earliest work was mineralogical in character, but he soon turned his attention to the study of electricity and especially of electrochemistry. In 1837 he received the Copley medal from the Royal Society "for his various memoirs on electricity, and particularly for those on the production of metallic sulphurets and sulphur by the long-continued action of electricity of very low tension," which it was hoped would lead to increased knowledge of the "recomposition of crystallized bodies, and the processes which may have been employed by nature in the production of such bodies in the mineral kingdom." In biological chemistry he worked at the problems of animal heat and at the phenomena accompanying the growth of plants, and he also devoted much time to meteorological questions and observations. He was a prolific writer, his books including _Traite d'electricite et du magnetisme_ (1834-1840), _Traite de physique dans ses rapports avec la chimie_ (1842), _Elements de l'electro-chimie_ (1843), _Traite complet du magnetisme_ (1845), _Elements de physique terrestre et de meteorologie_ (1847), and _Des climats et de l'influence qu'exercent les sols boises et deboises_ (1853). He died on the 18th of January 1878 in Paris, where from 1837 he had been professor of physics at the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle.

His son, ALEXANDRE EDMOND BECQUEREL (1820-1891), was born in Paris on the 24th of March 1820, and was in turn his pupil, assistant and successor at the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle; he was also appointed professor at the short-lived Agronomic Institute at Versailles in 1849, and in 1853 received the chair of physics at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. Edmond Becquerel was associated with his father in much of his work, but he himself paid special attention to the study of light, investigating the photochemical effects and spectroscopic characters of solar radiation and the electric light, and the phenomena of phosphorescence, particularly as displayed by the sulphides and by compounds of uranium. It was in connexion with these latter inquiries that he devised his phosphoroscope, an apparatus which enabled the interval between exposure to the source of light and observation of the resulting effects to be varied at will and accurately measured. He published in 1867-1868 a treatise in two volumes on _La Lumiere, ses causes et ses effets_. He also investigated the diamagnetic and paramagnetic properties of substances; and was keenly interested in the phenomena of electrochemical decomposition, accumulating much evidence in favour of Faraday's law and proposing a modified statement of it which was intended to cover certain apparent exceptions. He died in Paris on the 11th of May 1891.

ANTOINE HENRI BECQUEREL (1852-1908), son of the last-named, who succeeded to his chair at the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle in 1892, was born in Paris on the 15th of December 1852, studied at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he was appointed a professor in 1895, and in 1875 entered the department _des ponts et chaussees_, of which in 1894 he became _ingenieur en chef_. He was distinguished as the discoverer of radioactivity, having found in 1896 that uranium at ordinary temperatures emits an invisible radiation which in many respects resembles Rontgen rays, and can affect a photographic plate after passing through thin plates of metal. For his researches in this department he was in 1903 awarded a Nobel prize jointly with Pierre Curie. He also engaged in work on magnetism, the polarization of light, phosphorescence and the absorption of light in crystals. He died at Croisic in Brittany on the 25th of August 1908.

BED (a common Teutonic word, cf. German _Bett_, probably connected with the Indo-European root _bhodh_, seen in the Lat. _fodere_, to dig; so "a dug-out place" for safe resting, or in the same sense as a garden "bed"), a general term for a resting or sleeping place for men and animals, and in particular for the article of household furniture for that object, and so used by analogy in other senses, involving a supporting surface or layer. The accompaniments of a domestic bed (bedding, coverlets, &c.) have naturally varied considerably in different times, and its form and decoration and social associations have considerable historical interest. The Egyptians had high bedsteads which were ascended by steps, with bolsters or pillows, and curtains to hang round. Often there was a head-rest as well, semi-cylindrical and made of stone, wood or metal. Assyrians, Medes and Persians had beds of a similar kind, and frequently decorated their furniture with inlays or _appliques_ of metal, mother-of-pearl and ivory. The oldest account of a bedstead is probably that of Ulysses which Homer describes him as making in his own house, but he also mentions the inlaying of the woodwork of beds with gold, silver and ivory. The Greek bed had a wooden frame, with a board at the head and bands of hide laced across, upon which skins were placed. At a later period the bedstead was often veneered with expensive woods; sometimes it was of solid ivory veneered with tortoise-shell and with silver feet; often it was of bronze. The pillows and coverings also became more costly and beautiful; the most celebrated places for their manufacture were Miletus, Corinth and Carthage. Folding beds, too, appear in the vase paintings. The Roman mattresses were stuffed with reeds, hay, wool or feathers; the last was used towards the end of the Republic, when custom demanded luxury. Small cushions were placed at the head and sometimes at the back. The bedsteads were high and could only be ascended by the help of steps. They were often arranged for two persons, and had a board or railing at the back as well as the raised portion at the head. The counterpanes were sometimes very costly, generally purple embroidered with figures in gold; and rich hangings fell to the ground masking the front. The bedsteads themselves were often of bronze inlaid with silver, and Elagabalus, like some modern Indian princes, had one of solid silver. In the walls of some of the houses at Pompeii bed niches are found which were probably closed by curtains or sliding partitions. The marriage bed, _lectus genialis_, was much decorated, and was placed in the atrium opposite the door. A low pallet-bed used for sick persons was known as _scimpodium_. Other forms of couch were called _lectus_, but were not beds in the modern sense of the word except the _lectus funebris_, on which the body of a dead person lay in state for seven days, clad in a toga and rich garments, and surrounded by flowers and foliage. This bed rested on ivory legs, over which purple blankets embroidered with gold were spread, and was placed in the atrium with the foot to the door and with a pan of incense by its side. The ancient Germans lay on the floor on beds of leaves covered with skins, or in a kind of shallow chest filled with leaves and moss. In the early middle ages they laid carpets on the floor or on a bench against the wall, placed upon them mattresses stuffed with feathers, wool or hair, and used skins as a covering. They appear to have generally lain naked in bed, wrapping themselves in the large linen sheets which were stretched over the cushions. In the 13th century luxury increased, and bedsteads were made of wood much decorated with inlaid, carved and painted ornament. They also used folding beds, which served as couches by day and had cushions covered with silk laid upon leather. At night a linen sheet was spread and pillows placed, while silk-covered skins served as coverlets. Curtains were hung from the ceiling or from an iron arm projecting from the wall. The Carolingian MSS. show metal bedsteads much higher at the head than at the feet, and this shape continued in use till the 13th century in France, many cushions being added to raise the body to a sloping position. In the 12th-century MSS. the bedsteads appear much richer, with inlays, carving and painting, and with embroidered coverlets and mattresses in harmony. Curtains were hung above the bed, and a small hanging lamp is often shown. In the 14th century the woodwork became of less importance, being generally entirely covered by hangings of rich materials. Silk, velvet and even cloth of gold were much used. Inventories from the beginning of the 14th century give details of these hangings lined with fur and richly embroidered. Then it was that the tester bed made its first appearance, the tester being slung from the ceiling or fastened to the walls, a form which developed later into a room within a room, shut in by double curtains, sometimes even so as to exclude all draughts. The space between bed and wall was called the _ruelle_, and very intimate friends were received there. In the 15th century beds became very large, reaching to 7 or 8 ft. by 6 or 7 ft. Viollet-le-Duc says that the mattresses were filled with pea-shucks or straw--neither wool nor horsehair is mentioned--but feathers also were used. At this time great personages were in the habit of carrying most of their property about with them, including beds and bed-hangings, and for this reason the bedsteads were for the most part mere frameworks to be covered up; but about the beginning of the 16th century bedsteads were made lighter and more decorative, since the lords remained in the same place for longer periods. In the museum at Nancy is a fine bedstead of this period which belonged to Antoine de Lorraine. It has a carved head and foot as well as the uprights which support the tester. Another is in the Musee Cluny ascribed to Pierre de Gondi, very architectural in design, with a bracketed cornice, and turned and carved posts; at the head figures of warriors watch the sleeper. Louis XIV. had an enormous number of sumptuous beds, as many as 413 being described in the inventories of his palaces. Some of them had embroideries enriched with pearls, and figures on a silver or golden ground. The carving was the work of Proux or Caffieri, and the gilding by La Baronniere. The great bed at Versailles had crimson velvet curtains on which "The Triumph of Venus" was embroidered. So much gold was used that the velvet scarcely showed. Under the influence of Madame de Maintenon "The Sacrifice of Abraham," which is now on the tester, replaced "The Triumph of Venus." In the 17th century, which has been called "the century of magnificent beds," the style _a la duchesse_, with tester and curtains only at the head, replaced the more enclosed beds in France, though they lasted much longer in England. In the 18th century feather pillows were first used as coverings in Germany, which in the fashions of the bed and the curious etiquette connected with the bedchamber followed France for the most part. The beds were _a la duchesse_, but in France itself there was great variety both of name and shape--the _lit a alcove, lit d'ange_, which had no columns, but a suspended tester with curtains drawn back, _lit a l'Anglaise_, which looked like a high sofa by day, _lit en baldaquin_, with the tester fixed against the wall, _lit a couronne_ with a tester shaped like a crown, a style which appeared under Louis XVI., and was fashionable under the Restoration and Louis Philippe, and _lit a l'imperiale_, which had a curved tester, are a few of their varieties. The _lit en baldaquin_ of Napoleon I. is still at Fontainebleau, and the Garde Meuble contains several richly carved beds of a more modern date. The custom of the "bed of justice" upon which the king of France reclined when he was present in parliament, the princes being seated, the great officials standing, and the lesser officials kneeling, was held to denote the royal power even more than the throne. Louis XI. is credited with its first use, and the custom lasted till the end of the monarchy. From the habit of using this bed to hear petitions, etc., came the usage of the _grand lit_, which was provided wherever the king stayed, called also _lit de parement_ or _lit de parade_, rather later. Upon this bed the dead king lay in state. The beds of the king and queen were saluted by the courtiers as if they were altars, and none approached them even when there was no railing to prevent it. These railings were apparently placed for other than ceremonial reasons originally, and in the accounts of several castles in the 15th century mention is made of a railing to keep dogs from the bed. In the _chambre de parade_, where the ceremonial bed was placed, certain persons, such as ambassadors or great lords, whom it was desired to honour, were received in a more intimate fashion than the crowd of courtiers. The _petit lever_ was held in the bedroom itself, the _grand lever_ in the _chambre de parade_. At Versailles women received their friends in their beds, both before and after childbirth, during periods of mourning, and even directly after marriage--in fact in any circumstances which were thought deserving of congratulation or condolence. During the 17th century this curious custom became general, perhaps to avoid the tiresome details of etiquette. Portable beds were used in high society in France till the end of the _ancien regime_. The earliest of which mention has been found belonged to Charles the Bold (see _Memoirs_ of Philippe de Comines). They had curtains over a light framework, and were in their way as fine as the stationary beds. Iron beds appear in the 18th century; the advertisements recommend them as free from the insects which sometimes infested wooden bedsteads, but one is mentioned in the inventory of the furniture of the castle of Nerac in 1569, "un lit de fer et de cuivre, avec quatre petites colonnes de laiton, ensemble quatre satyres de laiton, quatre petits vases de laiton pour mettre sur les colonnes; dedans le dit lit il y a la figure d'Olopherne ensemble de Judith, qui sont d'albatre." In Scotland, Brittany and Holland the closed bed with sliding or folding shutters has persisted till our own day, and in England--where beds were commonly quite simple in form--the four-poster, with tester and curtains all round, was the usual citizen's bed till the middle of the 19th century. Many fine examples exist of 17th-century carved oak bedsteads, some of which have found their way into museums. The later forms, in which mahogany was usually the wood employed, are much less architectural in design. Some exceedingly elegant mahogany bedsteads were designed by Chippendale, Hepplewhite and Sheraton, and there are signs that English taste is returning to the wooden bedstead in a lighter and less monumental form. (J. P.-B.)

BED, in geology, a term for certain kinds of rock usually found to be arranged in more or less distinct layers; these are the beds of rock or strata. Normally, the bedding of rocks is horizontal or very nearly so; when the upper and lower surfaces of a bed are parallel, the bedding is said to be regular; if it is thickest at one point and thins away thence in every direction, the bedding is lenticular. Beds may be thick (50 ft. or more) or so thin as to be like sheets of paper, e.g. paper shales, such thin beds being often termed layers or laminae; intermediate regular varieties may be called flags, flagstones or tilestones. In fine-grained rocks the bedding is usually thinner and more regular than in coarser rocks, such as sandstones and grits. Bedding is confined to rocks which have been formed under water or by the agency of wind; these are the "stratified" rocks.

The deposition of rock material by moving water is not as a rule uniform, slight changes in the velocity produce an immediate change in the size of the particles deposited upon a given area; thus a coarse sand layer may be succeeded by a finer sand or a mud, or two sandy layers may be separated by a thin layer of muddy shale. Bedding is most often induced by a change in the nature of the contiguous strata; thus a sandstone is followed by a shale or vice versa--changes which may be due to the varying volume or velocity of a current. Or the nature of the deposit may be influenced by chemical actions, whereby we get beds of rock-salt or gypsum between beds of marl. Or again, organic activities may influence the deposit, beds of coal may succeed layers of shale, iron-stone may lie between limestones or clays, a layer of large fossils or of flints may determine a bedding plane in massive limestones. Flaky minerals like mica frequently assist in the formation of bedding planes; and the pressure of superincumbent strata upon earlier formed deposits has no doubt often produced a tendency in the particles to arrange themselves normal to the direction of pressure, thus causing the rock to split more readily along the same direction.

Where rapidly-moving currents of water (or air) are transporting or depositing sand, &c., the bedding is generally not horizontal, but inclined more or less steeply; this brings about the formation of what is variously called "cross-bedding," "diagonal bedding", "current bedding" or improperly "false-bedding." Igneous materials, when deposited through the agency of water or air, exhibit bedding, but no true stratification is seen in igneous rocks that have solidified after cooling, although in granites and similar rocks the process of weathering frequently produces an appearance resembling this structure. Miners not infrequently describe a bed of rock as a "vein," if it is one that has some economic value, e.g. a "vein of coal or ironstone." (J. A. H.)

BEDARESI, YEDAIAH (1270-1340), Jewish poet, physician and philosopher of Provence. His most successful work was an ethical treatise, _Behinath 'Olam_ (Examination of the World), a didactic poem in thirty-seven short sections. The work is still very popular. It was translated into English by Tobias Goodman.

BEDARIEUX, a town of southern France, in the department of Herault, on the Orb, 27 m. N.N.W. of Beziers by rail. Pop. (1906) 5594. The town has a 16th-century church, a board of trade arbitration, a chamber of arts and manufactures, a communal college and a school of drawing. Bedarieux was at one time a notable manufacturing centre. Its cloth-weaving industry, carried on under a special royal privilege from the end of the 17th century to the Revolution, employed in 1789 as many as 5000 workmen, while some thousand more were occupied in wool and cotton spinning, &c. In spite of the introduction of modern machinery from England, the industries of the place declined, mainly owing to the loss of the trade with the Levant; but of late years they have somewhat revived, owing partly to the opening up of coal mines in the neighbourhood. Besides cloth factories and wool-spinning mills, there are now numerous tanneries and leather-dressing works. There is some trade in timber, wool and agricultural produce.

BEDDGELERT ("Gelert's grave"), a village in Carnarvonshire, North Wales, at the foot of Snowdon. The tradition of Gelert, Llewelyn's hound, being buried there is old in Wales; and common to it and India is the legend of a dog (or ichneumon) saving a child from a beast of prey (or reptile), and being killed by the child's father under the delusion that the animal had slain the infant. The English poet, W.R. Spencer, has versified the tale of Llewelyn, king of Wales, leaving Gelert and the baby prince at home, returning to find Gelert stained with the blood of a wolf, and killing the hound because he thought his child was slain. Sir W. Jones, the Welsh philologist and linguist, gives the Indian equivalent (Lord Teignmouth's _Life of Jones_, ed. Rev. S.C. Wilkes, editor's supplement). A Brahmin, leaving home, left his daughter in charge of an ichneumon, which he had long cherished. A black snake came up and was killed by the ichneumon, mistakenly killed, in its turn, by the Brahmin on his coming back. Another version is the medieval romance in _The Seven Wise Masters of Rome_. In the edition printed by Wynkyn de Worde it is told by "the first master"--a knight had one son, a greyhound and a falcon; the knight went to a tourney, a snake attacked the son, the falcon roused the hound, which killed the serpent, lay down by the cradle, and was killed by the knight, who discovered his error, like Llewelyn, and similarly repented (Villon Society, British Museum reprint, by Gomme and Wheatley).

On the west of Beddgelert is Moel Hebog (Bare-hill of the falcon), a hiding-place of Owen Glendower. Here, in 1784, was found a brass Roman shield. Near is the famous Aberglaslyn Pass, dividing Carnarvon and Merioneth. In the centre is Cadair Rhys Goch o'r Eryri, a rock named as the chair of Rhys Goch, a bard contemporary with Glendower (died traditionally, 1429). Not far hence passed the Roman road from Uriconium to Segontium (see CARNARVON).

BEDDOES, THOMAS (1760-1808), English physician and scientific writer, was born at Shiffnall in Shropshire on the 13th of April 1760. After being educated at Bridgnorth grammar school and at Pembroke College, Oxford, he studied medicine in London under John Sheldon (1752-1808). In 1784 he published a translation of L. Spallanzani's _Dissertations on Natural History_, and in 1785 produced a translation, with original notes, of T.O. Bergman's _Essays on Elective Attractions_. He took his degree of doctor of medicine at Oxford in 1786, and, after visiting Paris, where he became acquainted with Lavoisier, was appointed reader in chemistry at Oxford University in 1788. His lectures attracted large and appreciative audiences; but his sympathy with the French Revolution exciting a clamour against him, he resigned his readership in 1792. In the following year he published _Observations on the Nature of Demonstrative Evidence_, and the _History of Isaac Jenkins_, a story which powerfully exhibits the evils of drunkenness, and of which 40,000 copies are reported to have been sold. About the same time he began to work at his project for the establishment of a "Pneumatic Institution" for treating disease by the inhalation of different gases. In this he was assisted by Richard Lovell Edgeworth, whose daughter, Anna, became his wife in 1794. In 1798 the institution was established at Clifton, its first superintendent being Humphry Davy, who investigated the properties of nitrous oxide in its laboratory. The original aim of the institution was gradually abandoned; it became an ordinary sick-hospital, and was relinquished by its projector in the year before his death, which occurred on the 24th of December 1808. Beddoes was a man of great powers and wide acquirements, which he directed to noble and philanthropic purposes. He strove to effect social good by popularizing medical knowledge, a work for which his vivid imagination and glowing eloquence eminently fitted him. Besides the writings mentioned above, he was the author of _Political Pamphlets_ (1795-1797), a popular _Essay on Consumption_ (1799), which won the admiration of Kant, an _Essay on Fever_ (1807), and _Hygeia, or Essays Moral and Medical_ (1807). He also edited John Brown's _Elements of Medicine_ (1795), and _Contributions to Physical and Medical Knowledge, principally from the West of England_ (1799).

A life of Beddoes by Dr John E. Stock was published in 1810.

BEDDOES, THOMAS LOVELL (1803-1849), English dramatist and poet, son of the physician, Thomas Beddoes, was born at Clifton on the 20th of July 1803. His mother was a sister of Maria Edgeworth, the novelist. He was sent to Bath grammar school and then to the Charterhouse. At school he wrote a good deal of verse and a novel in imitation of Fielding. In 1820 he was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, and in his first year published _The Improvisatore_, afterwards carefully suppressed, and in 1822 _The Bride's Tragedy_, which showed him as the disciple of the later Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. The play found a small circle of admirers, and procured for Beddoes the friendship of Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall). Beddoes retired to Southampton to read for his degree, and there Procter introduced him to a young lawyer, Thomas Forbes Kelsall, with whom he became very intimate, and who became his biographer and editor. At this time he composed the dramatic fragments of _The Second Brother_ and _Torrismond_. Unfortunately he lacked the power of constructing a plot, and seemed to suffer from a constitutional inability to finish anything. Beddoes was one of the first outside the limited circle of Shelley's own friends to recognize Shelley's genius, and he was certainly one of the earliest imitators of his lyrical method. In the summer of 1824 he was summoned to Florence by the illness of his mother, but she died before he arrived. He remained some time in Italy, and met Mrs Shelley and Walter Savage Landor before he returned to England. In 1825 he took his degree at Oxford, and in that year he began what he calls (_Letters_, p. 68) "a very Gothic styled tragedy" with "a jewel of a name." This work was completed in 1829 as the fantastic and incoherent drama, _Death's Jest Book or The Fool's Tragedy_; but he continued to revise it until his death, and it was only published posthumously. On leaving Oxford he decided to study anatomy and physiology, not, however, without some hope that his studies might, by increasing his knowledge of the human mechanism, further his efforts as a dramatist. In the autumn of 1825 he entered on his studies at Gottingen, where he remained for four years. In 1829 he removed to Wurzburg, and in 1832 obtained his doctorate in medicine, but his intimate association with democratic and republican leaders in Germany and Switzerland forced him to leave Bavaria without receiving his diploma. He settled in Zurich, where he practised for some time as a physician, and was even elected to be professor of comparative anatomy at the university, but the authorities refused to ratify his appointment because of his revolutionary views. He frequently contributed political poems and articles to German and Swiss papers, but none of his German work has been identified. The years at Zurich seem to have been the happiest of his life, but in 1839 the anti-liberal riots in the town rendered it unsafe for him, and early in the next year he had to escape secretly. From this time he had no settled home, though he stored his books at Baden in Aargau. His long residence in Germany was only broken by visits to England in 1828 to take his master of arts degree, in 1835, in 1842 and for some months in 1846. He had adopted German thought and manners to such an extent that he hardly felt at home in England; and his study of the German language, which he had begun in 1825, had almost weaned him from his mother-tongue; he was, as he says in a letter, "a non-conductor of friendship"; and it is not surprising that his old friends found him much changed and eccentric. In 1847 he returned to Frankfort, where he lived with a baker called Degen, to whom he became much attached, and whom he persuaded to become an actor. He took Degen with him to Zurich, where he chartered the theatre for one night to give his friend a chance of playing Hotspur. The two separated at Basel, and in a fit of dejection (May 1848) Beddoes tried to bleed himself to death. He was taken to the hospital, and wrote to his friends in England that he had had a fall from horseback. His leg was amputated, and he was in a fair way to recovery when, on the first day he was allowed to leave the hospital, he took curare, from the effects of which he died on the 26th of January 1849. His MSS. he left in the charge of his friend Kelsall.