sirous to commemorate the auspicious termination of the long war in which the empire had been engaged, and of marking his sense of the courage and devotion manifested by the officers of the king's forces by sea and land, ordained that thenceforward the order should be composed of three classes, differing in their ranks and degrees of dignity.

The First class to consist of knights grand crosses, which designation was to be substituted for that of knights companions previously used. The knights grand crosses, with the exception of princes of the blood-royal holding high commissions in the army and navy, not to exceed seventy-two in number; whereof a number not exceeding twelve might be nominated in consideration of services rendered in civil or diplomatic employments. To distinguish the military and naval officers upon whom the first class of the said order was then newly conferred, it was directed that they should bear upon the ensign or star, and likewise upon the badge of the order, the addition of a wreath of laurel, encircling the motto, and issuing from an escrol inscribed Ich dien; and the dignity of the first class to be at no time conferred upon persons who had not attained the rank of major-general in the army or rear-admiral in the navy, The Second class was to be composed of knights commanders, who were to have precedence of all knights bachelors of the United Kingdom; the number, in the first instance, not to exceed one hundred and eighty, exclusive of foreign officers holding British commissions, of whom a number not exceeding ten may be admitted into the second class as honorary knights commanders; but in the event of actions of signal distinction, or of future wars, the number of knights commanders may be increased. No person to be eligible as a knight commander who does not, at the time of his nomination, hold a commission in his Majesty's army or navy; such commission not being below the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the army or of post-captain in the navy. By a subsequent regulation in 1815, no person is now eligible to the class of K.C.B. unless he has attained the rank of majorgeneral in the army or rear-admiral in

the navy. Each knight commander to wear his appropriate badge or cognizance, pendent by red riband round the neck, and his appropriate star embroidered on the left side of his upper vestment. For the greater honour of this class, it was further ordained that no officer of his Majesty's army or navy was thenceforward to be nominated to the dignity of a knight grand cross who had not been appointed previously a knight commander of the order.

The Third class to be composed of officers holding commissions in his Majesty's service by sea or land, who shall be styled companions of the said order; not to be entitled to the appellation, style, or precedence of knights bachelors, but to take precedence and place of all esquires of the United Kingdom. officer to be nominated a companion of the order unless he shall previously have received a medal or other badge of honour, or shall have been specially mentioned by name in despatches published in the London Gazette as having distinguished himself.

No

The bulletin announcing the re-modelling of the Order of the Bath was dated Whitehall, January 2, 1815.

By another bulletin, dated Whitehall, January 6, 1815, the Prince Regent, acting in the name and on behalf of his Majesty, having taken into consideration the eminent services which had been rendered to the empire by the officers in the service of the Honourable East India Company, ordained that fifteen of the most distinguished officers of that service, holding commissions from his Majesty not below that of lieutenant-colonel, might be raised to the dignity of knights commanders of the Bath, exclusive of the number of knights commanders belonging to his Majesty's forces by sea and land who had been nominated by the ordinance of January 2. In the event of future wars, and of actions of signal distinction, the said number of fifteen to be increased. His Royal Highness further ordained that certain other officers of the same service, holding his Majesty's commission, might be appointed companions of the order of the Bath, in consideration of eminent services rendered in action

with the enemy; and that the said officers should enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities secured to the Third class of the said order. (Observations introductory to an Historical Essay upon the Knighthood of the Bath, by John Anstis, Esq. 4to. Lond. 1725; Selden's Titles of Honour, fol. Lond. 1672, pp. 678, 679; Camden's Britannia, fol. Lond. 1637, p. 172; Sandford's Genealog. Hist. fol. 1707, pp. 267, 431, 501, 562, 578; J. C. Dithmari, Commentatio de Honoratissimo Ordine de Balneo, fol. Franc. ad. Viad. 1729; Mrs. S. S. Banks's Collections on the Order of the Bath, MSS. Brit. Mus.; Statutes of the Order of the Bath, 4to. Lond. 1725, repr. with additions in 1812; Bulletins of the Campaign of 1815, pp. 1-18.)

BAWDY-HOUSES. [PROSTITUTION.] BEACON, a sign ordinarily raised upon some foreland or high ground as a sea-mark. It is also used for the firesignal which was formerly set up to alarm the country upon the approach of a foreign enemy. The word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon beacen or beacn, a sign or signal. Beac or bec is the real root, which we still have in beck, beckon. | Fires by night, as signals, to convey the notice of danger to distant places with the greatest expedition, have been used in many countries. They are mentioned in the prophecies of Jeremiah, who (chap. vi. ver. 1) says, "Set up a sign of fire in Beth-haccerem, for evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction." In the treatise De Mundo, attributed to Aristotle, it is said (edit. 12mo. Glasg. 1745, p. 35) that fire-signals were so disposed on watchtowers through the king of Persia's dominions, that within the space of a day he could receive intelligence of any disturbances in the most distant part of his dominions; but this is evidently an exaggerated statement. Eschylus, in his play of the Agamemnon, represents the intelligence of the capture of Troy as conveyed to the Peloponnesus by fire-beacons. During the Peloponnesian war we find firebeacons (puктoí) employed. (Thucyd. iii. 22.) Pliny distinguishes this sort of signal from the Phari, or light-houses placed upon the coasts for the direction of ships, by the name of "Ignes prænun

tiativi," notice-giving fires. (Plin. Hist. Nat. edit. Harduin, ii. 73.)

Lord Coke, in his Fourth Institute, chap. xxv., speaking of our own beacons, says, "Before the reign of Edward III. they were but stacks of wood set up on high places, which were fired when the coming of enemies was descried; but in his reign pitch-boxes, as now they be, were, instead of those stacks, set up; and this properly is a beacon." These beacons had watches regularly kept at them, and horsemen called hobbelars were stationed by most of them to give notice in day-time of an enemy's approach, when the fire would not be seen. (Camden, Brit. in Hampshire, edit. 1789, vol. i. p. 173.)

Stow, in his Annals, under the year 1326, mentions among the precautions which Edward II. took when preparing against the return of the queen and Mortimer to England, that "he ordained bikenings or beacons to be set up, that the same being fired might be seen far off, and thereby the people to be raised."

The Cottonian MS. in the British Museum, Augustus I. vol. i. art. 31, preserves a plan of the harbours of Poole, Purbeck, &c., followed, art. 33, by a chart of the coast of Dorsetshire from Lyme to Weymouth, both exhibiting the beacons which were erected on the Dorsetshire coast against the Spanish invasion in 1588. Art. 58 preserves a similar chart of the coast of Suffolk from Orwell Haven to Gorlston near Yarmouth, with the several forts and beacons erected on that coast.

The power of erecting beacons was originally in the king, and was usually delegated to the Lord High Admiral. In the eighth of Elizabeth an act passed touching sea-marks and mariners (chap. 13), by which the corporation of the Trinity House of Deptford Strond were empowered to erect beacons and sea-marks on the shores, forelands, &c. of the country according to their discretion, and to continue and renew the same at the cost of the corporation. [TRINITY HOUSE.]

Professor Ward, in his Observations on the Antiquity and Use of Beacons in England' (Archæologia, vol. i. p. 4), says, the money due or payable for the maintenance of beacons was called Beconagium,

and was levied by the sheriff of the county upon each hundred, as appears by an ordinance in manuscript for the county of Norfolk, issued to Robert de Monte and Thomas de Bardolfe, who sat in parliament as barons, 14th Edward II.

The manner of watching the beacons, particularly upon the coast, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, may be gathered from the instructions of two contemporary manuscripts printed in the Archaologia, col. viii. pp. 100, 183. The surprise of those by the sea-side was usually a matter of policy with an invading enemy, to prevent the alarm of an arrival from being spread.

An iron beacon or fire-pot may still be seen standing upon the tower of Hadley Church in Middlesex. Gough, in his edition of Camden, fol. 1789, vol. iii. p. 281, says, at Ingleborough, in Yorkshire, on the west edge, are remains of a beacon, ascended to by a flight of steps, and ruins of a watch-house. Collinson, in his History of Somersetshire, 4to. 1791, vol. ii. p. 5, describes the fire-hearths of four large beacons as remaining in his time upon a hill called Dunkery Beacon in that county. He also mentions the remains of a watchhouse for a beacon at Dundry (vol. ii. p. 105). Beacon-hills occur in some part or other of most counties of England which have elevated ground. The Herefordshire beacon is well known. Gough, in his additions to Camden, ut supr. vol. i. p. 394, mentions a beacon hill at Harescombe in Gloucestershire, inclosed by a transverse vallation fifty feet deep. Salmon, in his History of Hertfordshire, p. 349, says, at Therfield, on a hill west of the church, stood one of the four beacons of this county.

BEADLE, the messenger or apparitor of a court, who cites persons to appear to what is alleged against them. It is probably in this sense that we are to understand the bedelli, or under-bailiffs of manors, mentioned in several parts of the Domesday Survey. Spelman, Somner, and Watts all agree in the derivation of beadle from the Saxon bybel, a crier, and that from bis, to publish, as in bidding the banns of matrimony. The bedelli of manors probably aeted as criers in the lord's court. The beadle of a forest,

as Lord Coke informs us in his Fourth Institute, was an officer who not only warned the forest courts and executed process, but made all proclamations.

It appears from the Reports of the Commissioners of Corporation Inquiry (1835), that inferior officers, called Beadles, were appointed in forty-four boroughs out of upwards of two hundred visited by the commissioners.

Bishop Kennett, in the Glossary to his Parochial Antiquities of Oxfordshire, says that rural deans had formerly their beadles to cite the clergy and church officers to visitations and execute the orders of the court Christian. Parochial and church beadles were probably in their origin persons of this description, though now employed in more menial services.

Bedel, or Beadle, is also the name of an officer in the English universities, who in processions, &c. precedes the chancellor or vice-chancellor, bearing a mace. In Oxford there are three esquire and three yeomen bedels, each attached to the respective faculties of divinity, medicine and arts, and law. In Cambridge there are three esquire bedels and one yeoman bedel. The esquire bedels in the university of Cambridge, beside attending the vice-chancellor on public solemnities, attend also the professors and respondents, collects fines and penalties, and summon to the chancellor's court all members of the senate. (Ducange's Gloss. in voce Bedellus; Kennet, Paroch. Antiq. vol. ii. Gloss.; Gen. Introd. to Domesday Book, 8vo. edit. vol. i. p. 247; Camb. and Oxf. Univ. Calendars.)

BED OF JUSTICE. This expression (lit de justice) literally denoted the seat or throne upon which the king of France was accustomed to sit when personally present in parliaments, and from this original meaning the expression came, in course of time, to signify the parliament itself. Under the ancient monarchy of France, a Bed of Justice denoted a solemn session of the king in the parliament, for the purpose of registering or promulgating edicts or ordinances. According to the principle of the old French constitution, the authority of the parliament, being derived entirely from the crown, ceased when the king was present; and

consequently all ordinances enrolled at a bed of justice were acts of the royal will, and of more authenticity and effect than decisions of parliament. The ceremony of holding a bed of justice was as follows:-The king was seated on the throne, and covered; the princes of the blood-royal, the peers, and all the several chambers were present. The marshals of France, the chancellor, and the other great officers of state stood near the throne, around the king. The chancellor, or in his absence the keeper of the seals, declared the object of the session, and the persons present then deliberated upon it. The chancellor then collected the opinions of the assembly, proceeding in the order of their rank; and afterwards declared the determination of the king in the following words: "Le roi, en son lit de justice, à ordonné et ordonne qu'il sera procédé à l'enregistrement des lettres sur lesquelles on à délibéré." The last bed of justice was assembled by Louis XVI. at Versailles, on the 6th of August, 1788, at the commencement of the French revolution, and was intended to enforce upon the parliament of Paris the adoption of the obnoxious taxes, which had been previously proposed by Calonne at the Assembly of Notables. The resistance to this measure led to the assembly of the States-General, and ultimately to the Revolution.

BEDCHAMBER, LORDS OF THE, are officers of the royal household under the groom of the stole. The number of lords, in the reign of William IV., was twelve, who waited a week each in turn. The groom of the stole does not take his turn of duty, but attends his majesty on all state occasions. There were thirteen grooms of the bedchamber who waited likewise in turn. The salary of the groom of the stole was 2000l. per annum, of the lords 1000l. each, and of the grooms 500l. The salaries of all officers of the royal household are paid out of a fund appropriated for this purpose in the Civil List, and which is fixed by 1 Vict. c. 2, at 131,260l. per annum.

Chamberlayne, in his Present State of England,' 12mo. 1669, p 249, calls them gentlemen of the bedchamber. "The gentlemen of the Bedchamber," he says,

"consist usually of the prime nobility of England. Their office in general is, each one in his turn, to wait a week in every quarter in the king's bedchamber, there to lie by the king on a pallet-bed all night, and in the absence of the groom of the stole to supply his place." In the edition of the same work published in 1716, he adds, “Moreover, they wait upon the king when he eats in private; for then the cup-bearers, carvers, and sewers do not wait. This high office, in the reign of a queen, as in her late majesty's, is performed by ladies, as also that of the grooms of the bedchamber, who were called bedchamber women, and were five in number." At present there are in the queen's household, taking their turns of periodical duty, seven ladies of the bedchamber and eight bedchamber women. There are also a principal lady of the bedchamber and an extra lady of the bedchamber. Both the ladies of the bedchamber and the bedchamber women are allied to the nobility. In the household of the prince consort there are two lords of the bedchamber.

The title of lords of the bedchamber appears to have been adopted after the accession of the House of Hanover. They are first mentioned by that title in Chamberlayne's 'State of England' for 1718.

The question whether the ladies of the bedchamber should be regarded as political offices in the hands of the minister, or whether the appointment should depend upon the personal favour of the queen, formed an important feature in the ministerial crisis which took place in May, 1839. The government of Lord Melbourne had been defeated, and Sir Robert Peel was sent for by the Queen to form a new administration, and on proposing to consult her majesty on the subject of the principal appointments held by ladies in the royal household, her Majesty informed him that it was her pleasure to reserve those appointments, conceiving the interference of the minister "to be contrary to usage," while she added it was certainly " repugnant to her feelings." Sir R. Peel being thus denied the advantage of a public demonstration of her Majesty's "full support and confidence," resigned the task of