Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/758

BEDFORD LEVEL. ment to exclude the sea, and made the district a fertile inhabited region, traversed by roads, one of which still exists. After their departure, through the choking of the sluices, the level became a great morass, augmented by tidal inundations of the Thirteenth Century. Wisbech (q.v.) is the most important point in the district.

BEDFORDSHIRE. A midland county of England, bounded northeast by Huntingdon; east by Cambridge; southeast and south by Hertford; southwest and west by Buckingham; and northwest by Northampton (Map: England, F 4). Its extreme length is 31 miles; breadth, 25. Area, 460 square miles, five-sixths being arable, meadow, and pasture lands. The principal towns are Bedford, the capital, Biggleswade, Leighton, Buzzard, Dunstable, and Luton. The population, chiefly engaged in stock raising and agricultural pursuits, numbered in 1891, 160,700; in 1901, 171,250.

BEDFORD SQUARE. A large square in London near the British Museum.

BEDIVERE, bed'i-ver, Sir. A knight of the Round Table, who cast King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, into the lake, and who bore the dying King to the boat in which he was carried to the Vale of Avalon.

BED'LAM (ME. Bedlem, corrupted, in popular speech, from Bethlem, Bethlehem, shorter for 'Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem'). The name of a hospital for lunatics, in Saint George's Fields, Southwark, London. It was originally founded in Bishopsgate Street Without, in 1246, by Simon Fitz-Mary, one of the sheriffs of London, as "a priory of canons with brethren and sisters." When the religious houses were suppressed by Henry VIII., this one fell into the possession of the corporation of London, which converted it into an asylum for 50 or 60 insane persons. In the year 1675 the hospital was taken down, and a new one, affording accommodation for about 150 patients, was erected in Moorfields, at a cost of about £17,000. In 1814 the hospital was again pulled down, and the patients were transferred to a new hospital in Saint George's Fields, erected for 198 patients, but in 1838 extended so as to accommodate 166 more. The building, with its grounds, now covers an area of 14 acres, and is lacking in nothing likely to insure the comfort or promote the recovery of patients. In former times the patients were exhibited to the public, like wild beasts in cages, at so much per head, and visitors made sport of them, as told by Pepys and Boswell, and shown in Hogarth's pictures. The funds of the hospital not being sufficient to meet the expenditure, partially convalescent patients, with badges affixed to their arms, and known as Tom-o'-Bedlams, or 'Bedlam beggars,' were turned out to wander and beg in the streets. Edgar, in Shakespeare's Lear, assumes the character of one of these. This practice, however, appears to have been stopped before 1675, for an advertisement in the London Gazette of that date, from the governors of Bedlam, cautions the public against giving alms to vagrants representing themselves as from the hospital, no permission to beg being at that time given to patients. At present the moral and physical management of the patients is so excellent that annually more than one-half of their number are returned as cured.

BED'LINGTON. A coal-mining town of Northumberlandshire, England, on the Blyth, 11 miles north of Newcastle (Map: England, E 1), Population, in 1891, 17,000; in 1901, 18,750.

BEDLINGTON. A gray, rough-coated breed of terriers. See.

BED'LOE'S, or LIB'ERTY IS'LAND. An island comprising 13½ acres in upper New York Bay, 1½ miles southwest of the Battery, the southern extremity of Manhattan Island (Map: Greater New York, 9). It was ceded to the United States Government for the purpose of harbor defense, and was once occupied by Fort Wood, on the site of which now stands the Statue of Liberty presented by France to the United States. See.

BEDMAR', Marquis de (1572-1655). A Spanish politician. He was accredited ambassador to Venice by Philip III., and was accused of being the originator of an infamous plot against the Venetian Republic. With the Viceroy of Naples and Don Pedro de Toledo, Governor of Milan, he planned to seize the Venetian fleet, occupy the strong posts, fire the arsenals, and with the help of an Italian army and a Spanish fleet, plunder and destroy the city. The conspiracy was discovered, and Bedmar, happy to get off with his life, was sent home (1619). He was made president of the Council of Flanders in 1622, and soon after cardinal. He finally came back to Spain as Bishop of Oviedo, and died in that city. The authenticity of the accounts of Bedmar's plot has been disputed by later historians, and, to say the least, serious doubts have been cast on it. The story of the conspiracy was treated by Otway in his Venice Preserved. Consult: Saint René, Conspiration contre Venise (Paris, 1853); Ranke, Ueber die Verschwörung gegen Venedig (Berlin, 1837).

BEDNAK-DOLA. See.

BEDNUR, bed-noor', or BEDNORE, bed- nor' (Hind., Bamboo City), or Naqar. A de- cayed city of Mysore, India, situated in the midst of a basin in a rugged table-land of the western Ghats, at an elevation of more than 4000 feet above the sea, in latitude 13° 15' N. and longitude 75° 6' E., 150 miles northwest of Ser- ingapatam (Map: India. C 6). It was formerly the seat of a rajah, and its population exceeded 100,000. It was eight miles in circumference, and was strongly fortified. In 1763 it was taken by Hyder Ali, who pillaged it of property esti- mated at £12,000,000, and subsequently made it the seat of his government, calling it Hyder- nager (Hyder's town), of which the name Nagar is an abridgment. It was taken by the British under General Matthews in 1783, but soon re- taken by Tippoo, at the head of a superior force, when General Matthews and all the prin- cipal British officers were put to death.

BED OF JUS'TICE (Fr. lit de justice). Literally, the seat or throne occupied by the French monarch when he was present at the deliberations of the Parlement. Historically, a bed of justice signified a solemn session, in which the King was present, to overrule the decisions of the Parlement, and to enforce the acceptance of edicts or ordinances which it had previously rejected. The theory of the old French Constitution was that the authority of the Parlement