DICTIONARY
OF
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
BEAL, WILLIAM (1815–1870), religious writer, was born in 1815, and educated at King s College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He took the degree of B.A. in 1841; in the same year he was ordained deacon, and he was made vicar of Brooke near Norwich in 1847. The degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the university of Aberdeen. He is best known as the promoter of harvest homes for country districts in 1854. At Norwich he was vice-president of the People's College, and corresponding member of the Working Men's Congregational Union. He died in 1870. He was the editor of the 'West of England Magazine' and author of the following works: 1. 'An Analysis of Palmer's Origines Liturgicæ' (1850). 2. 'The Nineveh Monuments and the Old Testament.' 3. 'A Letter to the Earl of Albemarle on Harvest Homes.' 4. 'A First Book of Chronology' (1846). He edited with a preface 'Certain godly Prayers originally appended to the Book of Common Prayer.'
[Men of the Time, 7th ed.; Brit, Mus. Cat.]
BEALE, FRANCIS (fl. 1656), was the author of the 'Royall Game of Chesse Play, sometimes the Recreation of the late King with many of the Nobility, illustrated with almost one hundred Gambetts, being the study of Biochimo, the famous Italian,' London, 1656. A portrait of Charles I, engraved by Stent, forms the frontispiece of the volume; the dedication is addressed to Montague, Earl of Lindsey. The book is translated from Gioacchimo Greco's famous work on chess; was reissued in 1750, and again in 1819 (with remarks by G. W. Lewis). He contributed a poem to 'The Teares of the Isle of Wight shed on the tombe of ... Henrie, Earle of Southampton, ... as also James, Lord Wriothesley,' London, 1625; a copy of which is in the Grenville Library. The poem is reprinted in Malone's 'Shakspeare' (1821), xx. 452.
[Brit. Mus. Cat.; Hunter's MS. Chorus Vatum in MSS. Addl. 24489 f. 285.]
BEALE, JOHN, D.D. (1603–1683?), scientific writer, was descended from a good family in Herefordshire, in which county he was born in 1603, being nephew of Sir William Pye, attorney in the court of wards (Boyle, Works, v. 429). He was educated first at Worcester School, and afterwards at Eton, whence he proceeded in 1629 to King's College, Cambridge, where he read philosophy to the students for two years (Harwood, Alumni Etonenses, 228). 'At his entrance into that university he found the writings of the Ramists in high esteem, from which they sunk within three or four years after, without the solicitation of any party or faction, or other concernment, merely by the prevalence of solid truth and reasonable discourse. And the same fate soon after befel Calvinism in both universities' (Birch, Hist. of the Royal Society, iv. 235). From childhood Beale had been diligent in cultivating the art of memory, and he himself has left us an account of the marvellous proficiency which he attained. He says: 'By reading Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and such slight romances as the "Destruction of Troy," and other discourses and histories which were then obvious, I had learned a promptness of knitting all my reading and studies on an everlasting string. The same practice I continued upon theologues, logicians, and such philosophers as those times yielded. For some years before I came to Eton, I did (in secret corners, concealed from
