Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/598

BET of secretary of foreign correspondence for many years, and contributing many valuable papers to its Transactions. In 1824 he became a member of the Society of Antiquaries, and subsequently a member of the British Archæological Association; in the Transactions of both many papers of his are to be found. In addition to these various communications, Sir W. Betham published several distinct works, the earliest being "Irish Antiquarian Researches," 1826-27. In 1834 appeared the first volume of the "Origin and History of the Constitution of England, and of the early Parliaments of Ireland," a work of much merit, which, it is to be regretted, he has left incomplete. The same year he published "The Gael and Cymbri," and in 1842 the "Etruria Celtica," in which he contended for the identity of the Etruscan language with that of the Iberno-Celtic, and both of these with the Phœnician. In the midst of these active labours. Sir William died suddenly, from an affection of the heart, to which he was subject, on the 26th of October, 1853, at his residence near Dublin. As an antiquarian and a philologist, he was laborious, diligent, and enthusiastic; and though some of his speculations and theories have been questioned—not without reason; yet in a field of inquiry, where so much is debatable, we may make large allowances, and yet find much to respect and approve; while the solid and permanent services which he has rendered by his vast collections of important documents and records, should never be forgotten.—J. F. W.  BETHENCOURT,, seigneur de, conqueror of the Canary islands. He was chamberlain of Charles VI., and his estates being in Normandy he suffered much during that king's wars with the English. Driven at length, like so many Norman lords of that period, to seek his fortunes in strange countries, he obtained from Henry III. of Spain the title of lord of the Canary islands, and some forces to make good his patent. With these and a companion, named Gadifier, he succeeded about the year 1404 in obtaining the mastery of the islands; but more anxious to convert the natives to Christianity than to rule over them, after baptizing the king and many of his subjects, and establishing a bishopric to which an ecclesiastic was consecrated by the pope, he left the government in the hands of his nephew and returned to Normandy, where he died in 1425.—J. S., G.  BETHISY DE MEZIERES, , a French prelate, famous during and after the Revolution for his defence of the rights of the church, was born at Mezieres in the diocese of Amiens in 1744. He was made bishop of Uzès in Languedoc in 1780. His continued opposition to all the measures which assailed the church, compelled him to seek refuge in England, where he died in 1817.—J. B.  BETHLEN,, prince of Transylvania, and elected king of Hungary, one of the greatest men of his time, was born in 1580. Elected prince of Transylvania in 1613, he devoted his life to the maintenance of political and religious liberty in Hungary. He struggled for toleration, not for protestantism; for he supported Romanist churches in his principality, and did not even expel the jesuits, although he took the field against their intrigues in Hungary. When the Emperor Ferdinand II. began to oppress the protestants all over his dominions, Prince Bethlen put himself at the head of the Hungarian protestants, defeated the emperor; was elected king of Hungary in 1620, but refused to be crowned, satisfied with forcing Ferdinand in 1621 to conclude a peace at Nickolsburg, by which religious liberty was secured to Hungary. As the emperor, taking advantage of the fortune of war in Germany, neglected to observe the articles of peace, Bethlen rose a second and a third time; and by his skilful conduct of the war, won, in Gyarmath and Presburg, additional conditions of peace. In all these wars he never lost a battle; he seldom resorted to the assistance of the Turks, and having concluded a peace with the emperor, employed his good offices for mediating the same between Ferdinand and the Turks. He died in 1629, leaving Transylvania, his principality, in a flourishing condition.—F. P., L.  BETHLEN,, count and chancellor of Transylvania, born in 1648, and died in 1679. He wrote in Latin a valuable history of his country, from 1526 to 1600, which he concealed in a vault in his chateau when attacked by the Tartars. He was taken prisoner by those ruthless savages, who put him to death. Many years after, one of the descendants of the murdered count, in making some excavations in the chateau, discovered the scattered and dilapidated leaves of the history, which were carefully collected and published under the title of "Historiarum Pannonico-Daciarum Libri x." Count Wolfgang must not be confounded with another count of Bethlen named , who was born in 1613, and died in 1670, also chancellor of Transylvania, and author of a short history of his country, from 1629 to 1663, entitled "Rerum Transylvaniæ Libri iv."—J. T.  BETHLEN-BETHLEN,, count de, a German chronicler, born 1642; died at Vienna 1716; author of an autobiography, and of a work entitled "Sudores et Cruores Vieolai Bethlen." These two works have never been edited.—J. G.  BETHUNE, and. It is impossible to separate the Bethunes: their lives were nearly the same: they were little divided in death, and their memory remains, not as the memory of either, but of the Bethunes. Alexander was born in the parish of Monimail, Fifeshire, in 1804; John in the same parish six years later. John died in his thirtieth year; Alexander survived until 1843. In a small cottage, rude in structure, the work of their own hands, the two brothers spent their lives, in hardest struggle with poverty. Neither enjoyed the advantages of early formal education: they educated themselves, being of the temper which can draw best wisdom from the world, whether under sunshine or when its sky shows nothing but clouds. The existence of great peasants is not indeed the honour of any one special country. Such persons have sprung up in various lands, and sometimes, as in the case of Jéanne d'Arc, they have saved empires. And of these, Scotland, rugged though she is, has had her full share:—she may say with fullest justice, as she does also with no vain or improper pride, that amid her rural districts there have been, and still are, hearts and voices capable to inspire and command. Humble though these Bethunes were, and little skilled in mere lore, they possessed the truest culture: their hands were rough, but they were gentlemen. Poverty itself being, as they bore it, the medium through which they wrought out and possessed their moral independence, endowed them with a dignity, the impression of which exists still among their compeers. They wrote through no ambition, or any craving for the repute of authorship, but generally when too feeble for work, and to beguile weary time. Their joint volume, "Tales and Sketches of the Scottish Peasantry," is real as life. They knew the persons of whom they wrote,—they knew themselves. Some of their descriptions of our bleak Scottish moors are not unworthy the master pen of Scott himself. The work on "Practical Economy" should be a household book. It reveals the secret of their final victory—narrating how a peasant may be honest and stand upright; how without boastfulness, or other sense than that duty has been unobtrusively performed, he may feel what it is to say, that "he owes no man a penny." The Bethunes had no patrons, or rather they never sought any; nor are they to be pitied for the want of one. Patronage did little good to poor Burns. Let them rest as they were, with the simplest epitaph;—that, however, rising from their graves which sounds like a trumpet. Their works in poetry and prose have appeared in two small volumes; and the minutest incidents of their lives have been collected and published by Mr. William M'Combie.—A. J. N.  BETHUNE, a seignorial family originally of Artois, comprising several branches—Bethune d'Orval, Bethune de Selles et de Chabris, and Bethune de Charrost. Its founder was Robert, seigneur de Richebourg, who lived about the commencement of the eleventh century. We notice its principal members:— <section end="598H" /> <section begin="598I" />, duc de Charrost, born at Versailles in 1738. His virtues and munificence would have won him national honours in any age or country, and rendered him singular in that corrupt period of French history in which he lived. While a soldier he gave pensions to his comrades, insinuating that he acted in obedience to the instructions of government; and when the German contingent in which he served was decimated by an epidemic, he sold his effects to provide comforts for the sick, saying, "Since I owe my life to my country, I may well give her my plate." With like generosity he, throughout his career, denied himself the exercise of most of his seignorial rights; and when the first symptoms of revolution appeared, he hailed them with patriotic fervour. He was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, but recovered his liberty after the fall of Robespierre. His works treat of subjects of political economy. He died at Paris in 1800.—G. M. <section end="598I" /> <section begin="598Zcontin" />, a French prelate, born in 1647, became bishop of Verdun. He established in that town a seminary, for which he composed manuals of devotion and prayer, <section end="598Zcontin" />