BECKWITH 463 BEDDOES siastical authority, Becket asserted against the King the independence of the Church, and refused to sign the "Con- stitutions of Clarendon." By a Council, or Parliament, held at Northampton, in 1164, Becket was condemned and sus- pended from his office. He escaped, in disguise, to France, where he obtained the protection of its King. In response to his excommunication of the clergy who signed the "Constitutions," and some of the King's officers, the King, in 1166, banished all the relations of Becket and forbade all communication with him. War with France followed. Peace was made in 1169, between Henry and Louis. In 1170, a meeting took place between the King and the Archbishop at Fretteville, where they were professedly reconciled, and Becket returned to Canterbury. He at once published the Pope's sentence of suspension against the Archbishop of York, and other prelates,, who had crowned Prince Henry. The King's angry expressions, on learning this, in- duced four of his barons (Richard Brito, Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Morville, and William Tracy) to go immediately to Canterbury; and after unsuccessfully remonstrating with Becket, they followed him into the Cathedral^ and murdered him on the steps of the altar, Dec. 31, 1170. The King denied all share in this deed, and was absolved; but in 1174 he did penance at the murdered prelate's tomb. Becket was canonized by Alex- ander III., in 1172. His remains were, in 1220, transferred to a splendid shrine, which attracted crowds of pilgrims, and was loaded with rich offerings. This immense treasure was seized by Henry VIII., and the shrine destroyed in 1538. BECKWITH, SIR GEOBGE, an Eng- lish military officer, born in 1753. His scene of action was largely in America — in the United States, and the West Indies. He fought with the English in the American Revolution in 1776-1782, and was intrusted with important diplo- matic commissions in 1782-1791, as there was then no British Minister to the United States. In 1804, he was made governor of St. Vincent, and four years later governor of Barbadoes. As Eng- land was then at war with France, he organized an expedition and conquered Martinique, for which he obtained the thanks of the House of Commons. Later (1810) he conquered Guadeloupe, the last possession of the French in that part of the world. He died in London, March 20, 1823. BECKWITH, JAMES CARROLL, an Amei'ican genre painter, born in Hanni- bal, Mo., Sept. 23, 1852; was a pupil of Carolus Duran, and became a member of the National Academy in 1894. He taught for many years at the art Students' League, New York. Among his paint- ings are "Under the Lilacs"; "The Fal- coner"; etc. His best works were his portraits of Mark Twain, General Scho- field and others, at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Union League, etc. He died in October 1917. BED, in ordinary language, an article of domestic furniture to sleep upon. Originally, a bed was the skin of a beast stretched upon the floor; then rushes, heath, and after a time straw were sub- stituted. A modern bed consists of a large mattress stuffed with feathers, hair, or other materials,, with bolster, pillow, sheets, blankets, etc., the whole raised from the ground on a bedstead. The term bed sometimes excludes and sometimes includes the bedstead. In India, and other Eastern countries, the bed of a native, at least on his travels, is simply a mat, a rug, or a bit of old carpet; his bed clothes are his scarf or plaid. In mechanics, a bed is the foundation piece or portion of anything on which the body of it rests, as the bed piece of a steam engine; the lower stone of a grinding mill; or the box, body, or re- ceptacle of a vehicle. BEDDOES, THOMAS, an English phy- sician and author, born in Sheffield^ April 13, 1760; educated at Oxford, London, and Edinburgh. After taking his doctor's degree and visiting Paris, he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Oxford. There he published some ex- cellent chemical treatises, and "Obser- vations" on the calculus, sea scurvy, con- sumption, catarrh, and fever. His ex- pressed sympathy with the French rev- olutionists led to his retirement from his professorship in 1792, soon after which he published his "Observations on the Nature of Demonstrative Evidence," and the exceedingly popular "History of Isaac Jenkins." In 1794 he married a sister of Maria Edgeworth; and in 1798, with the pecuniary aid of Wedgwood, opened a "pneumatic" institution for cur- ing phthisical and other diseases by in- halation of gases. It speedily became an ordinary hospital, but was noteworthy as connected with the discovery of the properties of nitrous oxide, and as hav- ing been superintended by the young Humphry Davy. Beddoes' essays on "Consumption" (1779), and on "Fever" (1807), and his "Hygeia" (3 vols., 1807), had a high contemporary repute. He died Dec. 24, 1808.
