tenant of Ireland, who submitted it to the council of the academy, by which it was officially replied to. The last publication of Betham appeared in 1842, with the following title: 'Etruria Celtica: Etruscan Literature and Antiquities investigated, or the language of that people compared and identified with the Iberno-Celtic, and both shown to be Phoenician,' 2 vols. 8vo. A large collection of manuscripts in the Irish language acquired by Betham was purchased from him in 1850 by the Royal Irish Academy, in the library of which they are preserved. Betham died 26 Oct. 1853, and was buried at Monkstown, co. Dublin. As Ulster king of arms he was succeeded by Sir J. B. Burke. Betham's genealogical and heraldic manuscripts were sold at auction in London by Sotheby & Wilkinson in 1860. The greater part was purchased by private collectors. Portions, however, were bought for the British Museum, London, and for the office of Ulster King of Arms, Dublin.
[MSS. of Sheffield (P. F. Betham, Esq., Dublin); Records of Office of Ulster King of Arms, Dublin; Archives of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin; Fourth Report of Royal Commission on Historical MSS., 1874; Letter from George Petrie to Sir William R. Hamilton, Astronomer Royal, Ireland, 1840; Life of G. Petrie, by W. Stokes, 1868.]
BETHEL, SLINGSBY (1617–1697), republican, was the third son of Sir Walter Bethel of Alne, Yorkshire, who married Mary, the second daughter of Sir Henry Slingsby of Scriven, near Knaresborough, and was baptised at Alne 27 Feb. 1617. Being a younger son, he was placed in business, and went to Hamburg in 1637, staying there until December 1649. He was strongly opposed to the cause of the cavaliers, but did not approve of the conduct of the Protector, nor did he, as member for Knaresborough in the parliament of 1659, support Richard Cromwell's adherents in their efforts to procure his succession as protector with unlimited powers of action. In the new council of state appointed to hold office from 1 Jan. 1660, he was the last of the ten non-parliamentary members. When the estates of his uncle, Sir Henry Slingsby, the unfortunate cavalier who suffered for his devotion to the royal cause, were sequestered, they were bought in for his family by Mr. Stapylton and Slingsby Bethel; the letters which passed between them on this matter are printed in the ‘Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby’ (1836), pp. 344–54, 411. Through success in trade and through his family descent, he acquired considerable property in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and for many years after the Restoration he passed a retired life in London, living on his means, and taking no active part in opposition to a government which he distrusted. But on 24 June 1680 Bethel, who was a member of the company of leathersellers, and Henry Cornish, were chosen sheriffs of London and Middlesex, though they were unable to serve in consequence of their not having taken the oaths commanded by the Corporation Act. The country was divided into two parties through religious and political differences, Bethel and his colleague being the candidates of the whig and popular party in the city. Roger North, the tory historian, in his ‘Examen,’ p. 93, says of them that ‘the former used to walk about more like a corncutter than sheriff of London. He kept no house, but lived upon chops, whence it is proverbial for not feasting “to Bethel the city;”’ and Dryden, in the first part of his ‘Absalom and Achitophel,’ threw at Bethel, under the name of Shimei, all the slanders of his opponents. By Burnet the whig historian Bethel was styled ‘a known republican in principle’ and ‘a sullen and wilful man,’ and he adds that the selection of these candidates gave some plausibility to the rumour that the king would not have justice done him against his enemies, as Bethel ‘had expressed his approving the late king's death in very indecent terms,’ whilst their taking the sacrament, though they were independents, to qualify themselves for the office, damaged the anti-court party (History of own Times (1823 ed.), ii. 241–43). This last remark of Burnet refers to the fact that before the date of the second election Bethel and Cornish had duly qualified, and that thereupon they were elected by a large majority over the court candidates. On their retirement in 1681 they were thanked by the grand jury for the city, but Bethel was defeated on 5 Sept. in his candidature for the aldermanship of Bishopsgate ward. The sheriffs were accused, with Sir Robert Clayton and others, of having visited Fitzharris in Newgate with a message from Lord Howard that nothing would save his life but a discovery of the popish plot; but the accusation was promptly denied in a pamphlet called ‘Truth vindicated,’ 1681, which is reprinted in the ‘State Trials,’ viii. 411–25. Several pamphlets were published on the conduct of the sheriffs in taking the sacrament, and on Bethel's attempt to be returned for Southwark at the election of February 1681. A folio tract published in his interest at this election, entitled ‘The Vindication of Slingsby Bethel’ (1681), gave an emphatic denial to the assertion of his antagonists that he was a papist,
