Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/74

 the end of the year, they continued to act as Stephen's chief advisers, and headed the opposition to the bishop of Salisbury and his nephews (Gest. Steph.) At the council of Oxford (June 1139) matters came to a crisis, and, in a riot between the followers of the respective parties, the bishops were seized by the two earls, and imprisoned, at their advice, by Stephen ( xiii. 40; Gest. Steph.) This gave 'the signal for the civil war' (, Const. Hist. i. 326), in which the earl, active on Stephen's side, was rewarded by him with a grant of Worcester (and, it is said, the earldom) towards the close of 1139. At the battle of Lincoln (2 Feb. 1141) he was one of Stephen's commanders, but fled at the first onset, and left him to his fate ( xiii. 42; Gest. Steph.;, 270; , i. 116), and though he hastened to assure the queen that he would be faithful to the captured king (ib.), he assisted Geoffrey of Anjou to besiege Rouen in 1143. In 1145 he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Chron. Norm.), having (as 'count of Meulan') entrusted his lordship of Worcester to his brother, the earl of Leicester, and to the sheriff (App. 5th Report Hist. MSS. p. 301). On his return, he adhered to the empress, and held Worcester against Stephen in 1150. The king took the town, but not the castle ( 282), which he again attacked in 1152. He erected two forts to block it up, but was treacherously induced to destroy them by the count's brother (, i. 148). He would seem to have subsequently withdrawn to Normandy, where he was captured by his nephew, Robert de Montfort, who imprisoned him at Orbec till he restored to him his fief of Montfort (Chron. Norm.) He reappears in attendance on the court early in 1157, and in May 1160 is one of the witnesses to the treaty between Henry II and Louis. Henry took his castles into his own hands about January 1161, but he is not again mentioned. He died in 1166, being buried on 9 April. His son, Robert, count of Meulan (d. 1181), joined in Prince Henry's rebellion against his father, Henry II, in 1173 ( i. 46), and was father of Robert, count of Meulan, excommunicated as a member of John's faction in 1191



BEAVER, JOHN. [See .]

BEAVER, PHILIP (1766–1813), captain in the royal navy, son of the Rev. James Beaver, curate of Lewknor in Oxfordshire, was born on 28 Feb. 1766. He was little more than eleven years old when his father died, and his mother, being left poor, was glad to accept the offer of Captain Joshua Rowley, then commanding the Monarch, to take the boy with him to sea. His naval service began in October 1777; and during the following year, as midshipman of the Monarch, he witnessed the fight, celebrated in song, between the Arethusa and Belle-Poule (17 June), and had his small share in the notorious action off Ushant (27 July). In December he followed Rowley to the Suffolk, and went in her to the West Indies. He continued with Rowley, by this time rear-admiral, in the Suffolk, Conqueror, Terrible, and Princess Royal, in the fleet under admirals the Hon. John Byron, Hyde Parker, and Sir George Rodney, during the eventful years 1779-80, and afterwards under Sir Peter Parker at Jamaica. At Jamaica young Beaver continued during the rest of the war. On 2 June 1783 his patron. Admiral Rowley, advanced him to the rank of lieutenant. During the next ten years he resided principally with his mother at Boulogne, his naval service being limited to a few months in 1790 and in 1791, on the occasions known as the Spanish and the Russian armaments.

In the end of 1791 he associated himself with a scheme for colonising the island of Bulama on the coast of Africa, near Sierra Leone, and left England for that place on 14 April 1792. The whole affair seems from the beginning to have been conducted without forethought or knowledge. The would-be settlers were, for the most part, idle and dissipated. Beaver found himself at sea in command of a vessel of 260 tons, with 66 men, 24 women, and 31 children, mostly sea-sick, and all equally useless. When they landed, anything like discipline was unattainable. The party, assembled on shore, proved ignorant alike of law, industry, or order. The directors lost heart and took an early opportunity of returning to England. The command devolved on Beaver, and during a period of eighteen months he endeavoured, by unceasing toil, to keep a little order and to promote a little industry; but the men were quite unfitted for the work and manner of life, and the greater number of them died. The miserable remnants of the party evacuated the island in November 1798, and went to Sierra Leone, whence Beaver obtained a passage to England, and arrived at