Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/453

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Beverley
449
Beverley

expedition, and passed the winter on Melville Island. On his return from the Arctic Sea, being highly commended for his skill and care in his attendance on the sick, Beverley was promoted to the rank of full surgeon, and in May 1821 he was elected a fellow of the Roval Society. On his return to England he suffered severely from ophthalmia, but quite unexpectedly, on his recovery from this painful affliction, he was nominated supernumerary surgeon to the flagship on the Barbadoes station. The risk, however, of changing suddenly from an arctic to a tropical climate, while still in weak health, compelled him to decline the appointment, and he was consequently removed from the list of surgeons. In 1827 Beverley served as a volunteer under Sir Edward Parry in the capacity of surgeon and naturalist in the long and perilous journey on the Spitsbergen seas. We do not find any especial record of his labours as a natualist, out we learn incidentally that he rendered much valuable assistance in the collection and naming of botanical specimens, and was of much service in preparing many of the examples of Arctic zoology which were brought home. After his retirement from the navy Beverley entered into private practice in London. He lived to see his eightieth birthday, shortly after which he died, 16 Sept. 1868.

[Proceedings of the Royal Society, xvii. p. lxxxvii (1869); Parry's Journals of Voyages for the Discovery of a North-West Passage, 2nd ed. (1821).]

R. H-t.

BEVERLEY, HENRY ROXBY (1790–1863), actor, was the son of an actor named Beverley, at one time of Covent Garden Theatre, and subsequently manager of the house in Tottenham Street, known among other names as the King's Concert Rooms, the Regency, the West London, the Queen's, and the Prince of Wales's theatre. At this house, then called the Regency, Henry Roxby Beverley first appeared. Full opportunities of practice were afforded him by his mother, and he acquired some reputation as a low comedian. In October 1838 he replaced John Reeve at the Adelphi, playing in November Newman Noggs in 'Nicholas Nickleby.' He subsequently appeared in 'Oliver Twist,' 'Jack Sheppard,' and other melodramas, and played the principal characters in 'The Dancing Barber and other farces. In September 1839 he took the management of the Victoria Theatre. After relinquishing the post, he played in the country theatres, and was for some time manager of the Sunderland theatre and other houses, principally in the north of England, where he was an established favourite. Harry Beverley, as he was generally called, had more unction than often characterises a low comedian, and was a humorous and a sound, though not a brilliant actor. He died on Sunday, 1 Feb. 1863, at 20 Russell Square, the house of his brother, Mr. William Beverley, the eminent scene painter.

[Theatrical Inquisitor; Era Almanack; Era newspaper, 8 Feb. 1863.]

J. K.

BEVERLEY, ST. JOHN of. [See John.] BEVERLEY, JOHN of (d. 1414), a Carmelite of great theological fame, doctor and professor of divinity at Oxford, was born at Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He became a canon of St. John's, Church in that town, and from the few records left of him it api)ears that in 1367 he gave a chaplain and his successor forty acres of land in North Burton and Raventhorpe, and in 1378 alienated by license certain tenements in Yorkshire for the benefit of a chancery priest and his successors. He was trained in the theology of the Carmelite friars; wrote 'Quæstiones in Magistrum Sententiarum '(Master of the Sentences; i.e., Peter Lombard), Lib. iv., and 'Disputationes Ordinariae,' Lib. i., and other works of a like nature which exist in manuscript in the Queen's College Library, Oxford; and being a popular preacher, was specially regarded by Oxford men for the soundness of his theology and the variety of his literary studies. No more is told of him in general history; than that he flourished about 1390, and he is even confounded with, and his works attributed to, Johannes Beverlay, an Augustinian monk, ordained by Oliver Sutton, bishop of Lincoln, in 1294.

We think, however, that he is the same person as John of Beverley the Lollard. He certainly lived in the days of this society of itinerant preachers, the followers in England of John Wycliffe, so severely persecuted by Richard II and Henry IV. In addition to denial of transubstantiation and other important doctrines of the then existing church, the Lollards preached against pilgrimages to Canterbury, Walsingham, and Beverley as ‘accursed, foolish, and a spending of goods in waste.’ And John of Beverley seems to have joined 'certain other Oxford men,' and become one of the earliest converts to their views. Shortly after Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, the chief favourer of the movement, had escaped from the Tower, the Lollards were taken at their usual assembly place in St. Giles's Fields, and tried for