Part 33

BEATIFICATION (from the Lat. _beatus_, happy, blessed, and _facere_, to make), the act of making blessed; in the Roman Catholic Church, a stage in the process of canonization (q.v.).

BEATON (or BETHUNE), DAVID, (c. 1494-1546), Scottish cardinal and archbishop of St Andrews, was a younger son of John Beaton of Balfour in the county of Fife, and is said to have been born in the year 1494. He was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, and in his sixteenth year was sent to Paris, where he studied civil and canon law. About this time he was presented to the rectory of Campsie by his uncle James Beaton, then archbishop of Glasgow. When James Beaton was translated to St Andrews in 1522 he resigned the rich abbacy of Arbroath in his nephew's favour, under reservation of one half of the revenues to himself during his lifetime. The great ability of Beaton and the patronage of his uncle ensured his rapid promotion to high offices in the church and kingdom. He was sent by King James V. on various missions to France, and in 1528 was appointed keeper of the privy seal. He took a leading part in the negotiations connected with the king's marriages, first with Madeleine of France, and afterwards with Mary of Guise. At the French court he was held in high estimation by King Francis I., and was consecrated bishop of Mirepoix in Languedoc in December 1537. On the 20th of December 1538 he was appointed a cardinal priest by Pope Paul III., under the title of St Stephen in the Coelian Hill. He was the only Scotsman who had been named to that high office by an undisputed right, Cardinal Wardlaw, bishop of Glasgow, having received his appointment from the anti-pope Clement VII. On the death of Archbishop James Beaton in 1539, the cardinal was raised to the primatial see of Scotland.

Beaton was one of King James's most trusted advisers, and it was mainly due to his influence that the king drew closer the French alliance and refused Henry VIII.'s overtures to follow him in his religious policy. On the death of James in December 1542 he attempted to assume office as one of the regents for the infant sovereign Mary, founding his pretensions on an alleged will of the late king; but his claims were disregarded, and the earl of Arran, head of the great house of Hamilton, and next heir to the throne, was declared regent by the estates. The cardinal was, by order of the regent, committed to the custody of Lord Seaton; but his imprisonment was merely nominal, and he was soon again at liberty and at the head of the party opposed to the English alliance. Arran too was soon won over to his views, dismissed the preachers by whom he had been surrounded, and joined the cardinal at Stirling, where in September 1543 Beaton crowned the young queen. In the same year he was raised to the office of chancellor of Scotland, and was appointed protonotary apostolic and legate _a latere_ by the pope. Had Beaton confined himself to secular politics, his strenuous opposition to the plans of Henry VIII. for the subjugation of Scotland would have earned him the lasting gratitude of his countrymen. Unfortunately politics were inextricably interwoven with the religious controversies of the time, and resistance to English influence involved resistance to the

## activities of the reformers in the church, whose ultimate victory has

obscured the cardinal's genuine merits as a statesman. During the lifetime of his uncle, Beaton had shared in the efforts of the hierarchy to suppress the reformed doctrines, and pursued the same line of conduct still more systematically after his elevation to the primacy. The popular accounts of the persecution for which he was responsible are no doubt exaggerated, and it sometimes ceased for considerable periods so far as capital punishments were concerned. When the sufferers were of humble rank not much notice was taken of them. It was otherwise when a more distinguished victim was selected in the person of George Wishart. Wishart had returned to Scotland, after an absence of several years, about the end of 1544. His sermons produced a great effect, and he was protected by several barons of the English faction. These barons, with the knowledge and approbation of King Henry, were engaged in a plot to assassinate the cardinal, and in this plot Wishart is now proved to have been a willing agent. The cardinal, though ignorant of the details of the plot, perhaps suspected Wishart's knowledge of it, and in any case was not sorry to have an excuse for seizing one of the most eloquent supporters of the new opinions. For some time he was unsuccessful; but at last, with the aid of the regent, he arrested the preacher, and carried him to his castle of St Andrews. On the 28th of February 1546 Wishart was brought to trial in the cathedral before the cardinal and other judges, the regent declining to take any active part, and, being found guilty of heresy, was condemned to death and burnt.

The death of Wishart produced a deep effect on the Scottish people, and the cardinal became an object of general dislike, which encouraged his enemies to proceed with the design they had formed against him. Naturally resolute and fearless, he seems to have under-estimated his danger, the more so since his power had never seemed more secure. He crossed over to Angus, and took part in the wedding of his illegitimate daughter with the heir of the earl of Crawford. On his return to St Andrews he took up his residence in the castle. The conspirators, the chief of whom were Norman Leslie, master of Rothes, and William Kirkaldy of Grange, contrived to obtain admission at daybreak of the 29th of May 1546, and murdered the cardinal under circumstances of horrible mockery and atrocity.

The character of Beaton has already been indicated. As a statesman he was able, resolute, and in his general policy patriotic. As an ecclesiastic he maintained the privileges of the hierarchy and the dominant system of belief conscientiously, but always with harshness and sometimes with cruelty. His immoralities, like his acts of persecution, were exaggerated by his opponents; but his private life was undoubtedly a scandal to religion, and has only the excuse that it was not worse than that of most of his order at the time. The authorship of the writings ascribed to him in several biographical notices rests on no better authority than the apocryphal statements of Thomas Dempster.

Beaton's uncle, James Beaton, or Bethune (d. 1539), archbishop of Glasgow and St Andrews, was lord treasurer of Scotland before he became archbishop of Glasgow in 1509, was chancellor from 1513 to 1526, and was appointed archbishop of St Andrews and primate of Scotland in 1522. He was one of the regents during the minority of James V., and was chiefly responsible for this king's action in allying himself with France and not with England. He burned Patrick Hamilton and other heretics, and died at St Andrews in September 1539.

This prelate must not be confused with another, James Beaton, or Bethune (1517-1603), the last Roman Catholic archbishop of Glasgow. A son of John Bethune of Auchmuty and a nephew of Cardinal Beaton, James was a trusted adviser of the Scottish regent, Mary of Lorraine, widow of James V., and a determined foe of the reformers. In 1552 he was consecrated archbishop of Glasgow, but from 1560 until his death in 1603 he lived in Paris, acting as ambassador for Scotland at the French court.

See John Knox, _Hist. of the Reformation in Scotland_, ed. D. Laing (1846-1864); John Spottiswoode, archbishop of St Andrews, _Hist. of the Church of Scotland_ (Spottiswoode Soc., 1847-1851); Art. in _Dict. of Nat. Biog._ and works there quoted; and A. Lang, _Hist. of Scotland_, vols. i. and ii. (1900-1902).

BEATRICE, a city and the county-seat of Gage county, in S.E. Nebraska, U.S.A., about 40 m. S. of Lincoln. Pop. (1900) 7875 (852 foreign-born); (1910) 9356. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Union Pacific railways. Beatrice is the seat of the state institute for feeble-minded youth, and has a Carnegie library. The city is very prettily situated in the valley of the Big Blue river, in the midst of a fine agricultural region. Among its manufactures are dairy products (there is a large creamery), canned goods, flour and grist mill products, gasoline engines, well-machinery, barbed wire, tiles, ploughs, windmills, corn-huskers, and hay-balers. Beatrice was founded in 1857, becoming the county-seat in the same year. It was reached by its first railway and was incorporated as a town in 1871, was chartered as a city in 1873, and in 1901 became a city of the first class.

BEATTIE, JAMES (1735-1803), Scottish poet and writer on philosophy, was born at Laurencekirk, Kincardine, Scotland, on the 25th of October 1735. His father, a small farmer and shopkeeper, died when he was very young; but an elder brother sent him to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he gained a bursary. In 1753 he was appointed schoolmaster of Fordoun in his native county. Here he had as neighbours the eccentric Francis Garden (afterwards Lord Gardenstone, judge of the supreme court of Scotland), and Lord Monboddo. In 1758 he became an usher in the grammar school of Aberdeen, and two years later he was made professor of moral philosophy at Marischal College. Here he became closely acquainted with Dr Thomas Reid, Dr George Campbell, Dr Alexander Gerard and others, who formed a kind of literary or philosophic society known as the "Wise Club." They met once a fortnight to discuss speculative questions, David Hume's philosophy being an especial object of criticism. In 1761 Beattie published a small volume of _Original Poems and Translations_, which contained little work of any value. Its author in later days destroyed all the copies he found. In 1770 Beattie published his _Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in opposition to sophistry and scepticism_, the object of which, as explained by its author, was to "prove the universality and immutability of moral sentiment" (letter to Sir W. Forbes, 17th January 1765). It was in fact a direct attack on Hume, and part of its great popularity was due to the fact. Hume is said to have justly complained that Beattie "had not used him like a gentleman," but made no answer to the book, which has no philosophical value. Beattie's portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, hangs at Marischal College, Aberdeen. The philosopher is painted with the _Essay on Truth_ in his hand, while a figure of Truth thrusts down three figures representing, according to Sir W. Forbes, sophistry, scepticism and infidelity. Reynolds in a letter to Beattie (February 1774) intimates that he is well enough pleased that one of the figures is identified with Hume, and that he intended Voltaire to be one of the group. Beattie visited London in 1773, and was received with the greatest honour by George III., who conferred on him a pension of L200 a year. In 1771 and 1774 he published the first and second parts of _The Minstrel_, a poem which met with great and immediate success. The Spenserian stanza in which it is written is managed with smoothness and skill, and there are many fine descriptions of natural scenery. It is entirely on his poetry that Beattie's reputation rests. The best known of his minor poems are "The Hermit" and "Retirement."

In 1773 he was offered the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University, but did not accept it. Beattie made many friends, and lost none. "We all love Beattie," said Dr Johnson. "Mrs Thrale says, if ever she has another husband she will have him." He was in high favour too with Mrs Montagu and the other _bas bleus_. Beattie was unfortunate in his domestic life. Mary Dunn, whom he married in 1767, became insane, and his two sons died just as they were attaining manhood. The elder, James Hay Beattie, a young man of great promise, who at the age of nineteen had been associated with his father in his professorship, died in 1790. In 1794 the father published _Essays and Fragments in Prose and Verse by James Hay Beattie_ with a touching memoir. The younger brother died in 1796. Beattie never recovered from this second bereavement. His mind was seriously affected, and, although he continued to lecture occasionally, he neither wrote nor studied. In April 1799 he had a stroke of paralysis, and died on the 18th of August 1803.

Beattie's other poetical works include _The Judgment of Paris_ (1765), and "Verses on the death of [Charles] Churchill," a bitter attack which the poet afterwards suppressed. The best edition is the _Poetical Works_ (1831, new ed. 1866) in the _Aldine Edition of the British Poets_, with an admirable memoir by Alexander Dyce.

See also _An Account of the Life of James Beattie_ (1804), by A. Bower; and _An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie_ (1807), by Sir William Forbes; a quantity of new material is to be found in _Beattie and his Friends_ (1904), by the poet's great-grand-niece, Margaret Forbes; and _James Beattie, the Minstrel. Some Unpublished Letters_, edited by A. Mackie (Aberdeen, 1908).

BEATUS, of Liebana and Valcavado, Spanish priest and monk, theologian and geographer, was born about 730, and died in 798. About 776 he published his _Commentaria in Apocalypsin_, containing one of the oldest Christian world-maps. He took a prominent part in the Adoptionist controversy, and wrote against the views of Felix of Urgel, especially as upheld by Elipandus of Toledo. As confessor to Queen Adosinda, wife of King Silo of Oviedo (774-783), and as the master of Alcuin and Etherius of Osma, Beatus exercised wide influence. His original map, which was probably intended to illustrate, above all, the distribution of the Apostolic missions throughout the world--depicting the head of Peter at Rome, of Andrew in Achaia, of Thomas in India, of James in Spain, and so forth--has survived in ten more or less modified copies. One only of these--the "Osma" of 1203--preserves the Apostolic pictures; among the remaining examples, that of "St Sever," now at Paris, and dating from about 1030, is the most valuable; that of "Valcavado," recently in the Ashburnham Library, executed in 970, is the earliest; that of "Turin," dating from about 1100, is perhaps the most curious. Three others--"Valladolid" of about 1035, "Madrid" of 1047, and "London" of 1109--are derivatives of the "Valcavado-Ashburnham" of 970; the eighth, "Paris II," is connected, though not very intimately, with "St Sever," otherwise "Paris I"; the ninth and tenth, "Gerona" and "Paris III," belong to the Turin group of Beatus maps. All these works are emphatically of "dark-age" character; very seldom do they suggest the true forms of countries, seas, rivers or mountains, but they embody some useful information as to early medieval conditions and history. St Isidore appears to be their principal authority; they also draw, directly or indirectly, from Orosius, St Jerome, St Augustine, and probably from a lost map of classical antiquity, represented in a measure by the Peutinger Table of the 13th century.

The chief MSS. of the _Commentaria in Apocalypsin_ are (1-3) Paris, National Library, Lat. 8878; Lat. nouv. acq. 1366 and 2290; (4) Ashburnham MSS. xv.; (5) London, B. Mus., Addit. MSS. 11695; (6) Turin, National Library 1, ii. (1); (7) Valladolid, University Library, 229; (8) the MS. in the Episcopal Library at Osma, in Old Castile.

There is only one complete edition of the text, that by Florez (Madrid, 1770). See also Konrad Miller, _Die Weltkarte des Beatus_, Heft I. of _Mappaemundi: die altesten Weltkarten_ (Stuttgart, 1895); d'Avezac in _Annales de ... geographie_ (June 1870); Beazley, _Dawn of Modern Geography_, i. 387-388 (1897); ii. 549-559; 591-605 (1901). (C. R. B.)

BEAUCAIRE, a town of south-eastern France, in the department of Gard, 17 m. E. by S. of Nimes on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 7284. Beaucaire is situated on the right bank of the Rhone, opposite Tarascon, with which it is connected by two handsome bridges, a suspension-bridge of four spans and 1476 ft. in length, and a railway bridge. A triangular keep, a chapel, and other remains of a chateau (13th and 14th centuries) of the counts of Toulouse stand on the rocky pine-clad hill which rises to the north of the town; the chapel, dedicated to St Louis, belongs to the latest period of Romanesque architecture, and contains fine sculptures. The town derives celebrity from the great July fair, which has been held here annually since the 12th century, but has now lost its former importance (see FAIR). Beaucaire gives its name to the canal which communicates with the sea (near Aigues-Mortes) and connects it with the Canal du Midi, forming part of the line of communication between the Rhone and the Garonne. The town is an important port on the Rhone, and its commerce, the chief articles of which are wine, and freestone from quarries in the vicinity, is largely water-borne. Among its industries are distilling and the manufacture of furniture, and the preparation of vermicelli, sausages and other provisions.

Beaucaire occupies the site of the ancient _Ugernum_, and several remains of the Roman city have been discovered, as well as (in 1734) the road that led from Nimes. The present name is derived from _Bellum Quadrum_, a descriptive appellation applied in the middle ages either to the chateau or to the rock on which it stands. In 1125 Beaucaire came into the possession of the counts of Toulouse, one of whom, Raymund VI., established the importance of its fairs by the grant of privileges. In the Wars of the League it suffered severely, and in 1632 its castle was destroyed by Richelieu.

BEAUCE (Lat. _Belsia_), a physical region of north-central France, comprising large portions of the departments of Eure-et-Loir and Loir-et-Cher, and also extending into those of Loiret and Seine-et-Oise. It has an area of over 2800 sq. m., its limits being roughly defined by the course of the Essonne on the E., of the Loire on the S., and of the Brenne, the Loir and the Eure towards the W., though in the latter direction it extends somewhat beyond these boundaries. The Beauce is a treeless, arid and monotonous plain of limestone formation; windmills and church spires are the only prominent features of the landscape. Apart from the rivers on its borders, it is watered by insignificant streams, of which the Conie in the west need alone be mentioned. The inhabitants live in large villages, and are occupied in agriculture,

## particularly in the cultivation of wheat, for which the Beauce is

celebrated. Clover and lucerne are the other leading crops, and large flocks of sheep are kept in the region. Chartres is its chief commercial centre.

BEAUCHAMP, the name of several important English families. The baronial house of Beauchamp of Bedford was founded at the Conquest by Hugh de Beauchamp, who received a barony in Bedfordshire. His eldest son Simon left a daughter, whose husband Hugh (brother of the count of Meulan) was created earl of Bedford by Stephen. But the heir-male, Miles de Beauchamp, nephew of Simon, held Bedford Castle against the king in 1137-1138. From his brother Payn descended the barons of Bedford, of whom William held Bedford Castle against the royal forces in the struggle for the Great Charter, and was afterwards made prisoner at the battle of Lincoln, while John, who sided with the barons under Simon de Montfort, fell at Evesham. With him the line ended, but a younger branch was seated at Eaton Socon, Beds., where the earthworks of their castle remain, and held their barony there into the 14th century.

The Beauchamps of Elmley, Worcestershire, the greatest house of the name, were founded by the marriage of Walter de Beauchamp with the daughter of Urise d'Abetot, a Domesday baron, which brought him the shrievalty of Worcestershire, the office of a royal steward, and large estates. His descendant William, of Elmley, married Isabel, sister and eventually heiress to William Mauduit, earl of Warwick, and their son succeeded in 1268 to Warwick Castle and that earldom, which remained with his descendants in the male line till 1445. The earls of the Beauchamp line played a great part in English history. Guy, the 2nd, distinguished himself in the Scottish campaigns of Edward I., who warned him at his death against Piers Gaveston. Under Edward II. he was one of the foremost foes of Piers, who had styled him "the black cur of Arden," and with whose death he was closely connected. As one of the "lords ordainers" he was a recognized leader of the opposition to Edward II. By the heiress of the Tonis he left at his death in 1315 a son Earl Thomas, who distinguished himself at Crecy and Poitiers, was marshal of the English host, and, with his brother John, one of the founders of the order of the Garter. In 1369 his son Earl Thomas succeeded; from 1376 to 1379 he was among the lords striving for reform, and in the latter year he was appointed governor to the king. Under Richard II. he joined the lords appellant in their opposition to the king and his ministers, and was in power with them 1388-1389; treacherously arrested by Richard in 1397, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London (the Beauchamp Tower being called after him), but liberated by Henry IV. on his triumph (1399). In 1401 he was succeeded by his son Earl Richard, a brave and chivalrous warrior, who defeated Owen Glendower, fought the Percys at Shrewsbury, and, after travelling in state through Europe and the Holy Land, was employed against the Lollards and afterwards as lay ambassador from England to the council of Constance (1414). He held command for a time at Calais, and took an active part in the French campaigns of Henry V., who created him earl and count of Aumale in Normandy. He had charge of the education of Henry VI., and in 1437 was appointed lieutenant of France and of Normandy. Dying at Rouen in 1439, he left by Isabel, widow of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Worcester, a son, Earl Henry, who was created duke of Warwick, 1445, and is alleged, but without authority, to have been crowned king of the Isle of Wight by Henry VI. He died, the last of his line, in June 1445. On the death of Anne, his only child, in 1449, his vast inheritance passed to Anne, his sister of the whole blood, wife of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury ("the Kingmaker"), who thereupon became earl of Warwick.