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 BEDINGFIELD

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BEDLAM

■walls, and such other fortifications as he pleased in his manors of Oxburgh, together with a market there weeldy and a court of pye-powder''. Sir Henry was mainlj' instrumental, together with Sir Henrj' Jerning- ham, in placing Mary Tudor on the throne. He pro- claimed her at Norwich, and for his loyalty received an annual pension of £100 out of the forfeited estates of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Ultimately he became Lieu- tenant of the Tower of London and Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. As "jailer" of the Princess Elizabeth, who was suspected of complicity in Wyatt's rebellion, he lias been persistently misrepresented by Foxe and others, but the whole history of his custo- dianship of Elizabeth is contained in a series of letters addressed to the Queen and the Privy Council, and in their replies. This correspondence, which has been published by the Norfolk and Norwich Archseological Society, completely exonerates Sir Henry from either cruelty or want of courtesy in his treatment of the royal captive. On Elizabeth's accession he retired to Oxburgh and was caUed upon in a letter, in which the Queen addressed him as "trusty and well-be- loved", to furnish a horse and man armed, as his con- tribution to the defence of the country against an expected invasion of the French.

Wlien, however, the penal laws against Catholics were enforced with extreme severity, Sir Henry Bed- ingfeld was not spared. He was required to pay hea%-}' monthly fines for non-attendance at the parish church, while his house was searched for priests and church-furniture, and his servants dismissed for re- fusing to conform to the new state religion. Together ^\-ith his fellow-Catholics, he was a prisoner within five miles of his own house and might pass that boundary only by a written authorization of the Privy Council. He was buried in the Bedingfeld chantry at Oxburgh. He married Katharine, daughter of Sir Roger Towns- hend, ancestor of the present Marquess Townshend, by whom he had numerous issue.

Stale Papers relating to the custody of the Princess Elizabeth at n'oodstock (Norfolk and Norwich Archseological Society); Blomefield, History of Xorfolk; Mason, History of Norfolk; Calendar of State Papers. Dom. Eliz., 1681-90; original letters in the Oxburgh archives,

J. M. Stone.

Bedingfield, THOM.is. See Dotvnes, Thom.^s.

Bedini, C.uetan, Italian Cardinal and diplomat, b. at Sinigaglia, Italy, 15 May. 1806; d. at Viterbo, 6 Sept., 1864. He was appointed in 1849. by Pope Pius IX. Commissary Extraordinary at Bologna, one of the four Papal Provinces then recently in revolt and in which the Government of the Holy See was being maintained ^\^th the aid of the military power of Austria. He retired from this office in 1852 and after serving in various diplomatic posts was promoted to be titular Archbishop of Thebes. In 1853, upon his appointment as Apostolic Nuncio to the Court of Brazil, he was commissioned by the Holy Father to visit the United States to examine into the state of ecclesiastical affairs and, incidentally, to call on the President and present to him the compliments and good wishes of the pope. Arri\-ing in New York in June, 1853, he at once \asited Washington and called upon President Franklin Pierce, by whom he was received with great courtesy and to whom he pre- sented an autograph letter of the Holy Father. This visit, purely one of courtesy, was afterwards distorted into an attempt to gain official recognition of himself as the diplomatic representative of the pope in the L'nited States. His arrival in this countrj^ was the signal for a series of anti-Catholic demonstrations against him lasting throughout his tour. In New York the colony of Italian revolutionists who had fled to this country, urged on bj the apostate priest Gavazzi, and aided by the Know-nothing element, held a mass meeting and denounced the nuncio. A plot to assassinate him was formed, but was defeased 11.-25

through a warning given by one of the conspirators, Sassi, who himself was stabbed to death by one of his associates in New York City a day or two after.

Monsignor Bedini travelled extensively throughout the country and participated in many public re- ligious ceremonies. In many of the larger cities, not- ably Pittsburg, Louisville, and Cincinnati, his vi-sit ex- cited hostile comment and demonstration, chiefly by the adherents of Ivnow-nothingism, which was then rampant. In Cincinnati, particularly, this element, co-operating with some German infidel revolutionary exiles, plotted to do violence to him and to attack the cathedral where he was to officiate, but this design was frustrated bj- the vigilance of the city authorities, not, however, without bloodshed and rioting in which a number of the rioters lost their lives. He remained in this coimtry until January, 1854, when he returned to Rome. So apprehensive of personal ^^olence had he become, that when about to depart from New York, he left the city secretly and journeyed to Staten Island, five miles di.stant, where a tug car- ried him to the outgoing steamer. Later, he was elevated to the rank of cardinal and received the ap- pointment to the See of Viterbo and Toscanella.

She.a, Hist, of Calh. Ch. in U. S. (New York. 1892), IV; Has- s.iRD, Life of .irchbishop Hughes (New York, 1866); U. S. Cath. Hist. Soc; Hist. Records and Studies (New York, 1903).

Peter Condon.

Bedlam (an English abbreviation of Bethlehem), a London hospital originally intended for the poor sutfering from any ailment and for such as might have no other lodging, hence its name, Bethlehem, in Hebrew, the " house of bread." During the four- teenth century it began to be used partly as an asylum for the insane, for there is a report of a Royal Commission, in 1405, as to the state of lunatics corifined there. The word Bethlehem became shorts ened to Bedlam in popular speech, and the confine- ment of lunatics there gave rise to the use of this word to mean a house of confusion. Bedlam was founded in 1247 as a priory in Bishopsgate Street, for the order of St. Mary of Bethlehem, by Simon Fitz Marj-, an Alderman and Sheriff of London. This site is now occupied by the Liverpool Street rail- way station. In the next century it is mentioned as a hospital in a Hcense granted (1330) to collect alms in England, Ireland, and Wales. In 1375 Bedlam became a royal hospital, taken by the cro\^•n on the pretext that it was an alien priory. It seems afterwards to have reverted to the city. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the word Bedlam was used by T>Tidale to mean a madman, so that it would seem as though the hospital were now used as a lunatic asylum exclusively. In January, 1547, King Henry VHI formally granted St. Bar- tholomew's hospital and Bedlam, or Bethlehem, to the city of London, on condition that the city spend a certain amount on new buildings in connexion with St, Bartholomew's. In 1674, the old premises having become untenable, it was decided to build another hospital, and this was erected in what is now Finsbury Circus. This came to be known as old Bedlam, after the erection of a new building in St. George's Fields, which was opened August, 1815, on the site of the notorious tavern called the Dog and the Duck.

The attitude of successive generations of English- men towards the insane can be traced interestingly at Bedlam. Originally, it was founded and kept by religious. Every effort seems to have been made to bring patients to such a state of mental health as would enable them to leave the a.sylum. An old English word, "a Bedlam" signifies one discharged and licensed to beg. Such persons wore a tin plate on their arm as a badge and were known as Bed- lamers, Bedlamites, or Bedlam Beggars. Whenever outside inspection was not regularly maintained,