Chapter 6

See C.G. von Murr,Diplomatische Geschichte des berühmten Ritters Behaim(1778); A. von Humboldt,Kritische Untersuchungen(1836); F.W. Ghillany,Geschichte des Seefahrers Martin Behaim(1853); O. Peschel,Geschichte der Erdkunde, 214-215, 226, 251, andZeitalter der Entdeckungen, esp. p. 90; Breusing,Zur Geschichte der Geographie(1869); Eugen Gelcich in theMittheilungenof the Vienna Geographical Society, vol. xxxvi. pp. 100, &c.; E.G. Ravenstein,Martin de Bohemia, (Lisbon, 1900),Martin Behaim, His Life and His Globe(London, 1909), andVoyages of Diogo Cão and Bartholomeu Dias, 1482-1488, inGeographical Journal, Dec. 1900; see alsoGeog. Journal, Aug. 1893, p. 175, Nov. 1901, p. 509; Jules Mees inBull. Soc. Geog., Antwerp, 1902, pp. 182-204; A. Ferreira de Serpa inBull. Soc. Geog., Lisbon, 1904, pp. 297-307.

(C. R. B.)

BEHAR,orBihar, a town of British India, in the Patna district of Bengal, which gives its name to an old province, situated on the right bank of the river Panchana. Pop. (1901) 45,063. There are still some manufactures of silk and muslin, but trade has deserted Behar in favour of Patna and other places more favourably situated on the river Ganges and the railway, while the indigo industry has been ruined by the synthetic products of the German chemist, and the English colony of indigo planters has been scattered abroad.

The old province, stretching widely across the valley of the Ganges from the frontier of Nepal to the hills of Chota Nagpur, corresponds to the two administrative divisions of Patna and Bhagalpur, with a total area of 44,197 sq. m. and a population of 24,241,305. It is the most densely populated tract in India, and therefore always liable to famine; but it is now well protected almost everywhere by railways. It is a country of large landholders and formerly of indigo planters. The vernacular language is not Bengali, but a dialect of Hindu; and the people likewise resemble those of Upper India. The general aspect of the country is flat, except in the district of Monghyr, where detached hills occur, and in the south-east of the province, where the Rajmahal and Santal ranges abut upon the plains.

Behar abounds in great rivers, such as the Ganges, with its tributaries, the Ghagra, Gandak, Kusi, Mahananda and Sone. The Ganges enters the province near the town of Buxar, flows eastward and, passing the towns of Dinajpur, Patna, Monghyr and Colgong, leaves the province at Rajmahal. It divides the province into two almost equal portions; north of the river lie the districts of Saran, Champaran, Tirhoot, Purnea, and part of Monghyr and Bhagalpur, and south of it are Shahabad, Patna, Gaya, the Santal parganas, and the rest of Monghyr and Bhagalpur. The Ganges and its northern tributaries are navigable by country boats of large burden all the year round. The cultivation of opium is a government monopoly, and no person is allowed to grow the poppy except on account of government. The Behar Opium Agency has its headquarters at the town of Patna. Annual engagements are entered into by the cultivators, under a system of pecuniary advances, to sow a certain quantity of land with poppy, and the whole produce in the form of opium is delivered to government at a fixed rate.

Saltpetre is largely refined in Tirhoot, Saran and Champaran, and is exported both by rail and river to Calcutta. The manufactures of less importance are tussore-silk, paper, blankets, brass utensils, firearms, carpets, coarse cutlery and hardware, leather, ornaments of gold and silver, &c. Of minerals—lead, silver and copper exist in the Bhagalpur division, but the mines are not worked. One coal-mine is worked in the parganas. Before the construction of railways in India, the Ganges and the Grand Trunk road afforded the sole means of communication from Calcutta to the North-Western Provinces. But now the railroad is the great highway which connects Upper India with Lower Bengal. The East Indian railway runs throughout the length of the province. The climate of Behar is very hot from the middle of March to the end of June, when the rains set in, which continue till the end of September. The cold season, from October to the first half of March, is the pleasantest time of the year.

History.—The province of Behar corresponds to the ancient kingdom of Magadha, which comprised the country now included in the districts of Patna, Gaya and Shahabad, south of the Ganges. The origin of this kingdom, famous alike in the political and religious history of India, is lost in the mists of antiquity; and though the BrahmanicalPuranasgive lists of its rulers extending back to remote ages before the Christian era, the first authentic dynasty is that of the Saisunaga, founded by Sisunaga (c.600B.C.), whose capital was at Rajagaha (Rajgir) in the hills near Gaya; and the first king of this dynasty of whom anything is known was Bimbisara (c.528B.C.), who by conquests and matrimonial alliances laid the foundations of the greatness of the kingdom. It was in the reign of Bimbisara that Vardhamana Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, and Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, preached in Magadha, and Buddhist missionaries issued thence to the conversion of China, Ceylon, Tibet and Tatary. Even to this day Behar, where there are extensive remains of Buddhist buildings, remains a sacred spot in the eyes of the Chinese and other Buddhist nations.

Bimbisara was murdered by his son Ajatasatru, who succeeded him, and whose bloodthirsty policy reduced the whole country between the Himalayas and the Ganges under the suzerainty of Magadha. According to tradition, it was his grandson, Udaya, who founded the city of Pataliputra (Patna) on the Ganges, which under the Maurya dynasty became the capital not only of Magadha but of India. The remaining history of the dynasty is obscure; according to Mr Vincent Smith, its last representative was Mahanandin (417B.C.), after whose death the throne was usurped, under obscure circumstances, by Mahapadma Nanda, a man of low caste (Early Hist. of India, p. 36). It was a son of this usurper who was reigning at the time of the invasion of Alexander the Great; and the conqueror, when his advance was arrested at the Hyphasis (326B.C.), meditating an attack on Pataliputra (the Palimbothra of the Greeks), was informed that the king of Magadha could oppose him with a force of 20,000 cavalry, 200,000 infantry, 2000 chariots, and 3000 or 4000 elephants. The Nanda dynasty seems to have survived only for two generations, when (321B.C.) Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the great Maurya dynasty, seized the throne. This dynasty, of which the history belongs to that of India (q.v.), occupied the throne for 137 years. After the death of the great Buddhist king, Asoka (c.231), the Maurya empire began to break up, and it was finally destroyed about fifty years later when Pushyamitra Sunga murdered the Maurya king Brihadratha and founded the Sunga dynasty. Descendants of Asoka continued, however, to subsist in Magadha as subordinate rajas for many centuries; and as late as the 8th centuryA.D.petty Maurya dynasties are mentioned as ruling in Konkan. The reign of Pushyamitra, who held his own against Menander and succeeded in establishing his claim to be lord paramount of northern India, is mainly remarkable as marking the beginningof the Brahmanical reaction and the decline of Buddhism; according to certain Buddhist writers the king, besides reviving Hindu rites, indulged in a savage persecution of the monks. The Sunga dynasty, which lasted 112 years, was succeeded by the Kanva dynasty, which after 45 years was overthrown (c.27B.C.) by the Andhras or Satavahanas. InA.D.236 the Andhras were overthrown, and, after a confused and obscure period of about a century, Chandragupta I. established his power at Pataliputra (A.D.320) and founded the famous Gupta empire (seeGupta), which survived till it was overthrown by the Ephthalites (q.v.), or White Huns, at the close of the 5th century. In Magadha itself the Guptas continued to rule as tributary princes for some centuries longer. About the middle of the 8th century Magadha was conquered by Gopala, who had made himself master in Bengal, and founded the imperial dynasty known as the Palas of Bengal. They were zealous Buddhists, and under their rule Magadha became once more an active centre of Buddhist influence. Gopala himself built a great monastery at Udandapura, or Otantapuri, which has been identified by Sir Alexander Cunningham with the city of Behar, where the later Pala kings established their capital. Under Mahipala (c.1026), the ninth of his line, and his successor Nayapala, missionaries from Magadha succeeded in firmly re-establishing Buddhism in Tibet.

In the 11th century the Pala empire, which, according to the Tibetan historian Taranath, extended in the 9th century from the Bay of Bengal to Delhi and Jalandhar (Jullundur) in the north and the Vindhyan range in the south, was partly dismembered by the rise of the “Sena” dynasty in Bengal; and at the close of the 12th century both Palas and Senas were swept away by the Mahommedan conquerors, the city of Behar itself being captured by the Turki free-lance Mahommed-i-Bakhtyar Khilji in 1193, by surprise, with a party of 200 horsemen. “It was discovered,” says a contemporary Arab historian, “that the whole of that fortress and city was a college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar.” Most of the monks were massacred in the first heat of the assault; those who survived fled to Tibet, Nepal and the south. Buddhism in Magadha never recovered from this blow; it lingered in obscurity for a while and then vanished.

Behar now came under the rule of the Mahommedan governors of Bengal. About 1330 the southern part was annexed to Delhi, while north Behar remained for some time longer subject to Bengal. In 1397 the whole of Behar became part of the kingdom of Jaunpur; but a hundred years later it was annexed by the Delhi emperors, by whom—save for a short period—it continued to be held. The capital of the province was established under the Moguls at the city of Behar, which gave its name to the province. From the middle of the 14th to the middle of the 16th century a large part of Behar was ruled by a line of Brahman tributary kings; and in the 15th century another Hindu dynasty ruled in Champaran and Gorakhpur. Behar came into the possession of the East India Company with the acquisition of the Diwani in 1765, when the province was united with Bengal. In 1857 two zemindars, Umar Singh and Kumar Singh, rebelled against the British government, and for some months held the ruinous fort of Rohtas against the British.

SeeImperial Gazetteer of India(Oxford, 1908),s.v.“Bihar” and “Bengal”; V.A. Smith,Early History of India(2nd ed., Oxford, 1908).

BEHĀ UD-DĪN[Abū-l-maḥāsin Yūsuf Ibn Rāfī‘ Ibn Shaddād Behā Ud Dīn] (1145-1234), Arabian writer and statesman, was born in Mosul and early became famous for his knowledge of the Koran and of jurisprudence. Before the age of thirty he became teacher in the great college at Bagdad known as the Nizāmiyya, and soon after became professor at Mosul. In 1187, after making the pilgrimage to Mecca, he visited Damascus. Saladin, who was at the time besieging Kaukab (a few miles south of Tiberias), sent for him and became his friend. Behā ud-Dīn observed that the whole soul of the monarch was engrossed by the war which he was then engaged in waging against the enemies of the faith, and saw that the only mode of acquiring his favour was by urging him to its vigorous prosecution. With this view he composed a treatise onThe Laws and Discipline of Sacred War, which he presented to Saladin, who received it with peculiar favour. From this time he remained constantly attached to the person of the sultan, and was employed on various embassies and in departments of the civil government. He was appointed judge of the army and judge of Jerusalem. After Saladin’s death Behā-ud-Din remained the friend of his son Malik uz-Zāhir, who appointed him judge of Aleppo. Here he employed some of his wealth in the foundation of colleges. When Malik uz-Zāhir died, his son Malik ul-‘Aziz was a minor, and Behā ud-Dīn had the chief power in the regency. This power he used largely for the patronage of learning. After the abdication of Malik ul-‘Aziz, he fell from favour and lived in retirement until his death in 1234. Behā ud-Dīn’s chief work is hisLife of Saladin(published at Leiden with Latin translation by A. Schultens in 1732 and 1755). An English translation was published by the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, London, 1897.

For list of other extant works see C. Brockelmann,Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur(Weimar, 1898), vol. i. pp. 316 f.

(G. W. T.)

BEHĀ UD-DĪN ZUHAIR(Abū-l Faḍl Zuhair Ibn Maḥommed Al-Muhallabī) (1186-1258), Arabian poet, was born at or near Mecca, and became celebrated as the best writer of prose and verse and the best calligraphist of his time. He entered the service of Malik uṣ-Sāliḥ Najm ud-Dīn in Mesopotamia, and was with him at Damascus until he was betrayed and imprisoned. Behā ud-Dīn then retired to Nablūs (Shechem) where he remained until Najm ud-Dīn escaped and obtained possession of Egypt, whither he accompanied him in 1240. There he remained as the sultan’s confidential secretary until his death, due to an epidemic, in 1258. His poetry consists mostly of panegyric and brilliant occasional verse distinguished for its elegance. It has been published with English metrical translation by E.H. Palmer (2 vols., Cambridge, 1877).

His life was written by his contemporary Ibn Khallikan (see M‘G. de Slane’s trans. of hisBiographical Dictionary, vol. i. pp. 542-545).

(G. W. T.)

BEHBAHAN,a walled town of Persia in the province of Fars, pleasantly situated in the midst of a highly cultivated plain, 128 m. W.N.W. of Shiraz and 3 m. from the left bank of the river Tab, here called Kurdistan river. It is the capital of the Kuhgilu-Behbahan sub-province of Fars and has a population of about 10,000. The walls are about 3 m. in circumference and a Narinj Kalah (citadel) stands in the south-east corner. At a short distance north-west of the city are the ruins of Arrajan, the old capital of the province.

BEHEADING,a mode of executing capital punishment (q.v.). It was in use among the Greeks and Romans, and the former, as Xenophon says at the end of the second book of theAnabasis, regarded it as a most honourable form of death. So did the Romans, by whom it was known asdecollatioorcapitis amputatio. The head was laid on a block placed in a pit dug for the purpose,—in the case of a military offender, outside the intrenchments, in civil cases outside the city walls, near theporta decumana. Before execution the criminal was tied to a stake and whipped with rods. In earlier years an axe was used; afterwards a sword, which was considered a more honourable instrument of death, and was used in the case of citizens (Dig.48, 19, 28). It was with a sword that Cicero’s head was struck off by a common soldier. The beheading of John the Baptist proves that the tetrarch Herod had adopted from his suzerain the Roman mode of execution. Suetonius (Calig. c. 32) states that Caligula kept a soldier, an artist in beheading, who in his presence decapitated prisoners fetched indiscriminately for that purpose from the gaols.

Beheading is said to have been introduced into England from Normandy by William the Conqueror. The first person to suffer was Waltheof, earl of Northumberland, in 1076. An ancient MS. relating to the earls of Chester states that the serjeants or bailiffs of the earls had power to behead any malefactor or thief, and gives an account of the presenting of several heads of felonsat the castle of Chester by the earl’s serjeant. It appears that the custom also attached to the barony of Malpas. In a roll of 3 Edward II., beheading is called the “custom of Cheshire” (Lysons’Cheshire, p. 299, from Harl. MS. 2009 fol. 34b). The liberty of Hardwick, in Yorkshire, was granted the privilege of beheading thieves. (SeeGuillotine.)

But with the exceptions above stated beheading was usually reserved as the mode of executing offenders of high rank. From the 15th century onward the victims of the axe include some of the highest personages in the kingdom: Archbishop Scrope (1405); duke of Buckingham (1483); Catherine Howard (1542); earl of Surrey (1547); duke of Somerset (1552); duke of Northumberland (1553); Lady Jane Grey (1554), Lord Guildford Dudley (1554); Mary queen of Scots (1587); earl of Essex (1601); Sir Walter Raleigh (1618); earl of Strafford (1641); Charles I. (1649); Lord William Russell (1683); duke of Monmouth (1685); earl of Derwentwater (1716); earl of Kenmure (1716); earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino (1746); and the list closes with Simon, Lord Lovat, who (9th of April 1747) was the last person beheaded in England. The execution of Anne Boleyn was carried out not with the axe, but with a sword, and by a French headsman specially brought over from Calais. In 1644 Archbishop Laud was condemned to be hanged, and the only favour granted him, and that reluctantly, was that his sentence should be changed to beheading. In the case of the 4th Earl Ferrers (1760) his petition to be beheaded was refused and he was hanged.

Executions by beheading usually took place on Tower Hill, London, where the scaffold stood permanently during the 15th and 16th centuries. In the case of certain state prisoners,e.g.Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey, the sentence was carried out within the Tower on the green by St Peter’s chapel.

Beheading was only a part of the common-law method of punishing male traitors, which was ferocious in the extreme. According to Walcot’s case (1696), 1Eng. Rep.89, the proper sentence was “quod ... ibidem super bigam (herdillum) ponatur et abinde usque ad furcas de [Tyburn] trahatur, et ibidem per collum suspendatur et vivus ad terram prosternatur et quod secreta membra ejus amputentur, et interiora sua intra ventrem suum capiantur et in ignem ponantur et ibidemipso viventecomburantur, et quod caput ejus amputetur, quodque corpus ejus in quatuor partes dividatur et illo ponantur ubi dominus rex eas assignare voluit.” There is a tradition that Harrison the regicide after being disembowelled rose and boxed the ears of the executioner.

In Townley’s case (18 Howell,State Trials, 350, 351) there is a ghastly account of the mode of executing the sentence; and in that case the executioner cut the traitor’s throat. In the case of the Cato Street conspiracy (1820, 33 Howell,State Trials, 1566), after the traitors had been hanged as directed by the act of 1814, their heads were cut off by a man in a mask whose dexterity led to the belief that he was a surgeon.

Female traitors were until 1790 liable to be drawn to execution and burnt alive. In that year hanging was substituted for burning.

In 1814 so much of the sentence as related to disembowelling and burning the bowels was abolished and the king was empowered by royal warrant to substitute decapitation for hanging, which was made by that act the ordinary mode of executing traitors. But it was not till 1870 that the portions of the sentence as to drawing and quartering were abolished (Forfeiture Act 1870).

The more barbarous features of the execution were remitted in the case of traitors of high rank, and the offender was simply decapitated.

The block usually employed is believed to have been a low one such as would be used for beheading a corpse. C.H. Firth and S.R. Gardiner incline to the view that such a block was the one used at Charles I.’s execution. The more general custom, however, seems to have been to have a high block over which the victim knelt. Such is the form of that preserved in the armoury of the Tower of London. This is undoubtedly the block upon which Lord Lovat suffered, but, in spite of several axe-cuts on it, probably not one in early use. The axe which stands beside it was used to behead him and the other Jacobite lords, but no certainty exists as to its having been previously employed. On the ground floor of the King’s House, at the Tower, is preserved the processional axe which figured in the journeys of state prisoners to and from their trials, the edge turned from them as they went, but almost invariably turned towards them as they returned to the Tower. The axe’s head is peculiar in form, 1 ft. 8 in. high by 10 in. wide, and is fastened into a wooden handle 5 ft. 4 in. long. The handle is ornamented by four rows of burnished brass nails.

In Scotland they did not behead with the axe, nor with the sword, as under the Roman law, and formerly in Holland and France, but with the maiden (q.v.).

Capital punishment is executed by beheading in France, and in Belgium by means of the guillotine.

In Germany the instrument used varies in different states: in the old provinces of Prussia the axe, in Saxony and Rhenish Prussia the guillotine. Until 1851 executions were public. They now take place within a prison in the presence of certain specified officials.

Beheading is also the mode of executing capital punishment in Denmark and Sweden. The axe is used. In Sweden the execution takes place on the order of the king within a prison in the presence of certain specified officials and, if desired, of twelve representatives of the commune within which the prison is situate (Code 1864, s. 2, Royal Ordinance 1877).

In the Chinese empire decapitation is the usual mode of execution. By an imperial edict (24th of April 1905) certain attendant barbarities have been suppressed: viz. slicing, cutting up the body, and exhibiting the head to public view (32 Clunet, 1175).

BEHEMOTH(the intensive plural of the Hebrewb’hemah, a beast), the animal mentioned in the book of Job (ch. xl. 15), probably the hippopotamus, which in ancient times was found in Egypt below the cataracts of Syene. The word may be used in Job as typical of the primeval king of land animals, as leviathan of the water animals. The modern use expresses the idea of a very large and strong animal.

BEHISTUN,orBisitun, now pronouncedBisutum, a little village at the foot of a precipitous rock, 1700 ft. high, in the centre of the Zagros range in Persia on the right bank of the Samas-Ab, the principal tributary of the Kerkha (Choaspes). The original form of the name, Bagistana, “place of the gods” or “of God” has been preserved by the Greek authors Stephanus of Byzantium, and Diodorus (ii. 13), the latter of whom says that the place was sacred to Zeus,i.e.Ahuramazda (Ormuzd). At its foot passes the great road which leads from Babylonia (Bagdad) to the highlands of Media (Ecbatana, Hamadan). On the steep face of the rock, some 500 ft. above the plain, Darius I., king of Persia, had engraved a great cuneiform inscription (11 or 12 ft. high), which recounts the way in which, after the death of Cambyses, he killed the usurper Gaumata (in Justin Gometes, the pseudo-Smerdis), defeated the numerous rebels, and restored the kingdom of the Achaemenidae. Above the inscription the picture of the king himself is graven, with a bow in his hand, putting his left foot on the body of Gaumata. Nine rebel chiefs are led before him, their hands bound behind them, and a rope round their necks: the ninth is Skunka, the chief of the Scythians (Sacae) whom he defeated. Behind the king stand his bow-bearer and his lance-bearer; in the air appears the figure of the great god Ahuramazda, whose protection led him to victory.1The inscriptions are composed in the three languages which are written with cuneiform signs, and were used in all official inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings: the chief placeis of course given to the Persian language (in four columns); the three Susian (Elamitic) columns lie to the left, and the Babylonian text is on a slanting boulder above them; a part of the Babylonian has been destroyed by a torrent, which has made its way over it. In former times the second language has often been called Scythian, Turanian or Median; but we now know from numerous inscriptions of Susa that it is the language of Elam which was spoken in Susa, the capital of the Persian empire.

In 1835 the difficult and almost inaccessible cliff was first climbed by Sir Henry Rawlinson, who copied and deciphered the inscriptions (1835-1845), and thus completed the reading of the old cuneiform text and laid the foundation of the science of Assyriology. Diodorus ii. 13 (cf. xvii. 110), probably following a later author who wrote the history of Alexander’s campaigns, mentions the sculptures and inscriptions, but attributes them to Semiramis. At the foot of the rock are the remainders of some other sculptures (quite destroyed), the fragments of a Greek inscription of the Parthian prince Gotarzes (A.D.40; text in Dittenberger,Orientis graeci inscr. selectae, no. 431), and of an Arabic inscription.

See Sir Henry Rawlinson in theJourn. R. Geog. Soc.ix., 1839;J. R. Asiatic Soc.x. 1866, xiv., 1853, xv., 1855;Archaeologia, xxxiv., 1852; Sir R. Ker Porter,Travels, ii. 149 ff.; Flandin and Coste,Voyage en Perse, i. pl. 16; and the modern editions of the inscriptions, the best of which, up to the end of the 19th century, were: Weissbach and Bang,Die altpersischen Keilinschriften(1893); Weissbach,Die Achaemenideninschriften zweiter Art(1890); Bezold,Die (babylonischen) Achaemenideninschriften(1882). A description of the locality, with comments on the present state of the inscriptions and doubtful passages of the Persian text, was given by Dr A.V. Williams Jackson in theJournal of the American Oriental Society, xxiv., 1903, and in hisPersia, Past and Present(1906). Dr Jackson in 1903 climbed to the ledge of the rock and was able to collate the lower part of the four large Persian columns; he thus convinced himself that Foy’s conjecture ofārštām(“righteousness”) for Rawlinson’sabištāmorabaštāmwas correct. A later investigation was carried out in 1904 on the instructions of the British Museum Trustees by Messrs. L.W. King and R.C. Thompson, who published their results in 1907 under the title,The Inscription of Darius the Great at Behistûn, including a full illustrated account of the sculptures and the inscription, and a complete collation of the text.

(Ed. M.)

1A passage in the inscription runs:—“Thus saith Darius the king: That which I have done I have done altogether by the grace of Ahuramazda. Ahuramazda, and the other gods that be, brought aid to me. For this reason did Ahuramazda, and the other gods that be, bring aid to me, because I was not hostile, nor a liar, nor a wrongdoer, neither I nor my family, but according to Rectitude (ārštam) have I ruled.” (A.V. Williams Jackson,Persia, Past and Present)

BEHN, APHRA(otherwiseAfra, ApharaorAyfara) (1640-1689), British dramatist and novelist, was baptized at Wye, Kent, in 1640. Her father, John Johnson, was a barber. While still a child she was taken out to Surinam, then an English possession, from which she returned to England in 1658, when it was handed over to the Dutch. In Surinam Aphra learned the history, and acquired a personal knowledge of the African prince Oroonoko and his beloved Imoinda, whose adventures she has related in her novel,Oroonoko. On her return she married Mr Behn, a London merchant of Dutch extraction. The wit and abilities of Mrs Behn brought her into high estimation at court, and—her husband having died by this time—Charles II. employed her on secret service in the Netherlands during the Dutch war. At Antwerp she successfully accomplished the objects of her mission; and in the latter end of 1666 she wormed out of one Van der Aalbert the design formed by De Ruyter, in conjunction with the DeWitts, of sailing up the Thames and burning the English ships in their harbours. This she communicated to the English court, but although the event proved her intelligence to have been well founded, it was at the time disregarded. Disgusted with political service, she returned to England, and from this period she appears to have supported herself by her writings. Among her numerous plays areThe Forced Marriage, or the Jealous Bridegroom(1671);The Amorous Prince(1671);The Town Fop(1677); andThe Rover, or the Banished Cavalier(in two parts, 1677 and 1681); andThe Roundheads(1682). The coarseness that disfigures her plays was the fault of her time; she possessed great ingenuity, and showed an admirable comprehension of stage business, while her wit and vivacity were unfailing. Of her short tales, or novelettes, the best is the story ofOroonoko, which was made the basis of Thomas Southerne’s popular tragedy. Mrs Behn died on the 16th of April 1689, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

SeePlays written by the Late Ingenious Mrs Behn(1702; reprinted, 1871); also “Aphra Behn’s Gedichte und Prosawerke,” by P. Siegel inAnglia(Halle, vol. xxv., 1902, pp. 86-128,329-385); and A.C. Swinburne’s essay on “Social Verse” inStudies in Prose and Poetry(1894).

BEHR, WILLIAM JOSEPH(1775-1851), German publicist and writer, was born at Salzheim on the 26th of August 1775. He studied law at Würzburg and Göttingen, became professor of public law in the university of Würzburg in 1799, and in 1819 was sent as a deputy to theLandtagof Bavaria. Having associated himself with the party of reform, he was regarded with suspicion by the Bavarian king Maximilian I. and the court party, although favoured for a time by Maximilian’s son, the future King Louis I. In 1821 he was compelled to give up his professorship, but he continued to agitate for reform, and in 1831 the king refused to recognize his election to theLandtag. A speech delivered by Behr in 1832 was regarded as seditious, and he was arrested. In spite of his assertion of loyalty to the principle of monarchy he was detained in custody, and in 1836 was found guilty of seeking to injure the king. He then admitted his offence; but he was not released from prison until 1839, and the next nine years of his life were passed under police supervision at Passau and Regensburg. In 1848 he obtained a free pardon and a sum of money as compensation, and was sent to the German national assembly which met at Frankfort in May of that year. He passed his remaining days at Bamberg, where he died on the 1st of August 1851. Behr’s chief writings are:Darstellung der Bedürfnisse, Wünsche und Hoffnungen deutscher Nation(Aschaffenburg, 1816);Die Verfassung und Verwaltung des Staates(Nuremberg, 1811-1812);Von den rechtlichen Grenzen der Einwirkung des Deutschen Bundes auf die Verfassung, Gesetzgebung, und Rechtspflege seiner Gliederstaaten(Stuttgart, 1820).

BEIRA,a seaport of Portuguese East Africa, at the mouth of the Pungwe river, in 19° 50′ S., 34° 50′ E., 488 m. N. of Delagoa Bay, in communication by railway with Cape Town via Umtali, Salisbury and Bulawayo. Pop. about 4000, of whom a third are Europeans, and some 300 Indians. The town is built on a tongue of sand extending into the river, and is comparatively healthy. The sea front is protected by a masonry wall, and there are over 13,000 ft. of wharfage. Vessels drawing 24 ft. can enter the port at high tide. Between the customs house and the railway terminus is the mouth of a small river, the Chiveve, crossed by a steel bridge, the centre span revolving and giving two passages each of 40 ft. The town is without any architectural pretensions, but possesses fine public gardens. It is the headquarters of the Companhai de Moçambique, which administers the Beira district under charter from the Portuguese crown. The business community is largely British.

Beira occupies the site of a forgotten Arab settlement. The present port sprang into being as the result of a clause in the Anglo-Portuguese agreement of 1891 providing for the construction of a railway between Rhodesia and the navigable waters of the Pungwe. The railway at first began at Fontesvilla, about 50 m. by river above Beira, but was subsequently brought down to Beira. The completion in 1902 of the line connecting Salisbury with Cape Town adversely affected the port of Beira, the long railway route from the Cape being increasingly employed by travellers to and from Mashonaland. Moreover, the high freights on goods by the Beira route enabled Port Elizabeth to compete successfully for the trade of Rhodesia. In October 1905 a considerable reduction was made in railway rates and in port dues and customs, with the object of re-attracting to the port the transit trade of the interior, and in 1907 a branch of the Rhodesian customs was opened in the town. In that year goods valued at £647,000 passed through the port to Rhodesia. Efforts were also made to develop the agricultural and mineral resources of the Beira district itself. The principal exports are rubber, sugar, ground-nuts and oil seeds, beeswax, chromite (from Rhodesia), and gold (from Manica). The imports are chiefly rice (from India) and cotton goods for local use, and food stuffs, machinery, hardware and manufactured goods for Rhodesia. For the three years, 1905-1907, the average annual value of theimports and exports, excluding the transit trade with Rhodesia, was, imports £200,000, exports £90,000. Direct steamship communication with Europe is maintained by German and British lines.

SeePortuguese East Africa; also the reports issued yearly by the British Foreign Office on the trade of Beira.

BEIRA,an ancient principality and province of northern and central Portugal; bounded on the N. by Entre Minho e Douro and by Traz os Montes, E. by the Spanish provinces of Leon and Estremadura, S. by Alemtejo and Portuguese Estremadura, and W. by the Atlantic Ocean. Pop. (1900) 1,515,834; area, 9208 sq. m. Beira is administratively divided into the districts of Aveiro, Coimbra, Vizeu, Guarda and Castello Branco, while it is popularly regarded as consisting of the three sections— Beira Alta or Upper Beira (Vizeu), north and west of the Serra da Estrella; Beira Baixa or Lower Beira (Guarda and Castello Branco), south and east of that range; and Beira Mar or Maritime Beira (Aveiro and Coimbra), coinciding with the former coastal province of Douro. The coast line, about 72 m. long, is uniformly flat, with long stretches of sandy pine forest, heath or marshland bordered by a wide and fertile plain. Its most conspicuous features are the lagoon of Aveiro (q.v.) and the bold headland of Cape Mondego; in the south Aveiro, Murtosa, Ovar and Figueira da Foz are small seaports. Except along the coast, the surface is for the most part mountainous,—the highest point in the Serra da Estrella, which extends from north-east to south-west through the centre of the province, being 6532 ft. The northern and south-eastern frontiers are respectively marked by the two great rivers Douro and Tagus, which rise in Spain and flow to the Atlantic. The Agueda and Côa, tributaries of the Douro, drain the eastern plateaus of Beira; the Vouga rises in the Serra da Lapa, and forms the lagoon of Aveiro at its mouth; the Mondego springs from the Serra da Estrella, passes through Coimbra, and enters the sea at Figueira da Foz; and the Zezere, a tributary of the Tagus, rises north-north-east of Covilhã and flows south-west and south.

Beira has a warm and equable climate, except in the mountains, where the snowfall is often heavy. The soil, except in the valleys, is dry and rocky, and large stretches are covered with heath. The principal agricultural products are maize, wheat, garden vegetables and fruit. The olive is largely cultivated, the oil forming one of the chief articles of export; good wine is also produced. In the flat country between Coimbra and Aveiro the marshy land is laid out in rice-fields or in pastures for herds of cattle and horses. Sheep farming is an important industry in the highlands of Upper Beira; while near Lamego swine are reared in considerable numbers, and furnish the well-known Lisbon hams. Iron, lead, copper, coal and marble are worked to a small extent, and millstones are quarried in some places. Salt is obtained in considerable quantities from the lagoons along the coast. There are few manufactures except the production of woollen cloth, which occupies a large part of the population in the district of Castello Branco. Three important lines of railway, the Salamanca-Oporto, Salamanca-Lisbon and Lisbon-Oporto, traverse parts of Beira; the two last named are also connected by the Guarda-Figueira da Foz railway, which has a short branch line going northwards to Vizeu. The chief towns, Aveiro (pop. 1900, 9979), Castello Branco (7288), Coimbra (18,144), Covilhã (15,469), Figueira da Foz (6221), Guarda (6124), Ilhavo (12,617), Lamego (9471), Murtosa (9737), Ovar (10,462) and Vizeu (8057), with the frontier fortress of Almeida (2330), are described in separate articles. There is a striking difference of character between the inhabitants of the highlands, who are grave and reserved, hardy and industrious, and those of the lowlands, who are more sociable and courteous, but less energetic. The heir-apparent to the throne of Portugal has the title of prince of Beira.

BEIRUTorBeyrout. (1) A vilayet of Syria, constituted as recently as 1888, which stretches along the sea-coast from Jebel el-Akra, south of the Orontes, to the Nahr Zerka, south of Mount Carmel, and towards the south extends from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. It includes fivesanjaks, Latakia, Tripoli, Beirut, Acre and Buka’a. (2) The chief town of the vilayet (anc.Berytus), the most important seaport town in Syria, situated on the south side of St George’s Bay, on rising ground at the foot of Lebanon. Pop. 120,000 (Moslems, 36,000; Christians, 77,000; Jews, 2500; Druses, 400; foreigners, 4100). Berytus, whether it is to be identified with HebrewBerothaior not (2 Sam. viii. 8; Ezek. xlvii. 16), was one of the most ancient settlements on the Phoenician coast; but nothing more than the name is known of it tillB.C.140, when the town was taken and destroyed by Tryphon in his contest with Antiochus VII. for the throne of the Seleucids. It duly passed under Rome, was much favoured by the Herods and became acolonia. It was famous for its schools, especially that of law, from the 4th centuryA.D.onwards. Justinian recognized it as one of the three official law schools of the empire (A.D.533), but within a few years, as the result of a disastrous earthquake (551), the students were transferred to Sidon. In the following century it passed to the Arabs (635), and was not again a Christian city till 1111, when Baldwin captured it. Saladin retook it in 1187, and thenceforward, for six centuries and a half, whoever its nominal lords may have been, Saracen, Crusader, Mameluke or (from the 16th century) Turk, the Druse emirs of Lebanon dominated it (seeDruses). One of these, Fakr ed-Din Maan II., fortified it early in the 17th century; but the Turks asserted themselves in 1763 and occupied the place. During the succeeding epoch of rebellion at Acre under Jezzar and Abdullah pashas, Beirut declined to a small town of about 10,000 souls, in dispute between the Druses, the Turks and the pashas,—a state of things which lasted till Ibrahim Pasha captured Acre in 1832. When the powers moved against the Egyptians in 1840, Beirut had recently been occupied in force by Ibrahim as a menace to the Druses; but he was easily driven out after a destructive bombardment by Admiral Sir Robert Stopford (1768-1847). Since the pacification of the Lebanon after the massacre of the Christians in 1860 (for later history, seeLebanon), Beirut has greatly increased in extent, and has become the centre of the transit trade for all southern Syria. In 1894 a harbour, constructed by a French company, was opened, but the insecurity of the outer roadstead militates against its success. Nevertheless trade is on the increase. In 1895 a French company completed a railway across the Lebanon to Damascus, and connected it with Mezerib in the Hauran, whence now starts the line to the Hejaz. Since 1907 it has also had railway communication with Aleppo; and a narrow-gauge line runs up the coast to Tripoli. The steepness of the Lebanon railway, and the break of gauge at Rayak, the junction for Aleppo, have prevented the diversion of much of the trade of North Syria to Beirut. The town has been supplied with water, since 1875, by an English company, and with gas, since 1888, by a French company. There are many American and European institutions in the city: the American Presbyterian mission, with a girls’ school and a printing office, which published the Arabic translation of the Bible, and now issues a weekly paper and standard works in Arabic; the Syrian Protestant college with its theological seminary, medical faculty, training college and astronomical observatory; the Scottish mission, and St George’s institute for Moslem and Druse girls; the British Syrian mission schools; the German hospital, orphanage and boarding school; the French hospital and schools, and the Jesuit “Université de St Joseph” with a printing office. In summer most of the richer residents reside on the Lebanon, and in winter the governor of the Lebanon and many Lebanon notables inhabit houses in Beirut. The town has many fine houses, but the streets are unpaved and the bazaars mean. The Moslem inhabitants, being in a minority, have often shown themselves fanatical and turbulent. There are several fairly good hotels for tourists.

(C. W. W.; D. G. H.)

BEIT, ALFRED(1853-1906), British South African financier, was the son of a well-to-do merchant of Hamburg, Germany, and in 1875, after a commercial education at home, was sent out to Kimberley, South Africa, to investigate the diamond prospects. He had relatives, the Lipperts, out there in business, and in conjunction with Mr (afterwards Sir) Julius Wernher(b. 1850) he rapidly acquired a leading position on the diamond fields, and became closely allied with the ideals of Cecil Rhodes (q.v.). In 1889 Rhodes and Beit effected the amalgamation of various interests in the De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited. It was largely owing to the capital and enterprise of Beit that the deep-level mining in the Witwatersrand district of the Transvaal was started, and he had a large share in the principal company, the Rand Mines Limited. The firm of Wernher, Beit & Co. gradually transferred the centre of their financial operations to London, where they became the leading house in the dealings in South African mines. The rapid progress made in developing the diamond and gold output made Beit a man of enormous wealth, and he utilized it lavishly in pursuit of Rhodes’s South African policy. He was one of the original directors of the British South Africa company, and was included with Rhodes in the censure passed by the House of Commons Commission of Inquiry on the Jameson Raid (1896). He was subsequently one of Rhodes’s trustees. Personally of a modest, gentle, generous and retiring disposition, and strongly imbued with Rhodes’s ideas of British imperialism, he was one of the South African millionaires of German birth against whom the anti-imperialist section in England were never tired of employing their sarcastic invective. But though shrinking from ostentation in any form, his purse was continually opened for public objects, notably his support of the Imperial Light Horse and Imperial Yeomanry in the South African War of 1899-1902, and his endowment of the professorship of colonial history at Oxford (1905). He gave £100,000 to establish a university in his native city of Hamburg and £200,000 for a university in Johannesburg. He built a fine house in Park Lane, London, but was never prominent in social life. He died, unmarried, on the 16th of July 1906.

BEJA(orBīja), the name under which is comprised a widespread family of tribes, usually classed as Hamitic. They may, however, represent very early Semitic immigrants (seeHamitic Races). When first recorded the Beja occupied the whole region between the Nile and the Red Sea from the border of Upper Egypt to the foot of the Abyssinian plateau. They were known to the ancient Egyptians, upon whose monuments they are represented. They are the Blemmyes of Strabo (xvii. 53), and have also been identified with the Macrobii of Herodotus, “tallest and finest of men” (iii. 17). It has been suggested, though on insufficient grounds, that the Beja, rather than the Abyssinians, are the “Ethiopians” of Herodotus, the civilized people who built the city of Meroë and its pyramids. During the Roman period the Beja were much what they are to-day, nomadic and aggressive, and were constantly at war. In 216A.H.(A.D.832) the Moslem governor of Assuan made a treaty with the Beja chief, by which the latter undertook to guard the road to Aidhab and pay an annual tribute of one hundred camels. This is the earliest record of a government engagement with the northern section of the Beja, now the Abābda. Ibn Batuta, early in the 14th century, mentions a king of Beja, El Hadrabi, who received two-thirds of the revenue of Aidhab, the other third going to the king of Egypt. The Beja territory contained gold and emerald mines. The tribesmen were the usual escort for pilgrims to Mecca from Kus to Aidhab. According to Leo Africanus, at the close of the 14th or very early in the 15th century their rich town of Zibid (Aidhab?) on the Red Sea was destroyed. This seems to have broken up the tribal cohesion. Leo Africanus describes the Beja as “most base, miserable and living only on milk and camels’ flesh.” In the middle ages the Beja, partially at any rate, were Christians. The kingdom of Meroö was succeeded by that of “Aloa,” the capital of which, Soba, was on the Blue Nile, about 13 m. above Khartum. The country was conquered by the Funj (q.v.), a negroid people who subsequently became Mahommedan and compelled the Beja to adopt that religion. Until the invasion of the Egyptians, under Ismail, son of Mehemet Ali (1820), the Funj remained in possession.

All the Beja are now Mahommedans, but generally only so in name, though some of the tribes enthusiastically fought for Mahdiism (1883-99). As a race the Beja are remarkable for physical beauty, with a colour more red than black, and of a distinctly Caucasic type of face. The chiefs are, as a rule, of much fairer complexion than the tribesmen. In spite of their claim to Arab origin, the tribes have preserved many negro customs in the matter of costume and scarring the body. Their hair-dressing is very characteristic. The hair, worn thick as a protection against the sun, is parted in a circle round the head on a level with the eyes, above which the hair, saturated with mutton fat or butter, is trained straight up like a mop, with separate tufts at sides and back. Most of the tribes are nomadic shepherds, driving their cattle from pasture to pasture; some few are occupied in agriculture.

They are polygynous, but, unlike the Arabs, great independence is granted their women. Among most of the Beja peoples the wife can return to her mother’s tent whenever she likes, and after a birth of a child she can repudiate the husband, who must make a present to be re-accepted. Cases are said to have occurred where the woman has thus obtained all her husband’s possessions. The whole social position of the Beja women points, indeed, to an earlier matriarchal system. Among some of the tribes the custom of the “fourth day free” is observed, by which the women are only considered married for so many days a week, forming what liaisons they please on the odd day. The chief Beja tribes are the Abābda, Bishārïn, Hadendoa, Beni-Amer, Amarar, Shukuria, Hallenga and Hamran.

BEJA(probably the ancientPax Julia), the capital of an administrative district formerly included in the province of Alemtejo, Portugal; situated 95 m. S.S.E. of Lisbon by the Lisbon-Faro railway, and at the head of a branch line to Pias e Orada (3855), 26 m. E. Pop. (1900) 8885. Beja is an episcopal city, built on an isolated hill, and partly enclosed by walls of Roman origin; on the south it has a fine Roman gateway. Its cathedral is modern, but the citadel, with its beautiful Gothic tower of white marble, was founded by King Diniz (1279-1325). The city is surrounded by far-reaching plains, known as the Campo de Beja, and devoted partly to the cultivation of grain and fruit, partly to the breeding of cattle and pigs; copper, iron and manganese are also mined to a small extent, and Beja is the central market for all these products. Cloth, pottery and olive oil are manufactured in the city.

The administrative district of Beja, the largest and most thinly-populated district in Portugal, coincides with the southern part of Alemtejo (q.v.); pop. (1900) 163,612; area, 3958 sq. m.; 41.3 inhabitants per sq. m.

BEJAN(Fr.béjaune, frombec jaune, “yellow beak,” in allusion to unfledged birds; the equivalent to Ger.Gelbschnabel, Fr.blanc-bec, a greenhorn), a term for freshmen, or undergraduates of the first year, in the Scottish universities. The phrase was introduced from the French universities, where the levying ofbejaunium“footing-money” had been prohibited by the statutes of the university of Orleans in 1365 and by those of Toulouse in 1401. In 1493 the election of anAbbas Bejanorum(Abbot of the Freshmen) was forbidden in the university of Paris. In the German and Austrian universities the freshman was calledbeanus. In Germany the freshman was anciently called aPennal(from Med. Lat.pennale, a box for pens), in allusion to the fact that the newly-arrived student had to carry such for the older pupils. AfterwardsFuchs(fox) was substituted forPennal, and thenGoldfuchsbecause he is supposed still to have a few gold coins from home.

BÉJART,the name of several French actors, children of Marie Hérve and Joseph Béjart (d. 1643), the holder of a small government post. The family—there were eleven children— was very poor and lived in the Marais, then the theatrical quarter of Paris. One of the sons,Joseph Béjart(c.1617-1659), was a strolling player and later a member of Molière’s first company (l’Illustre Théâtre), accompanied him in his theatrical wanderings, and was with him when he returned permanently to Paris, dying soon after. He created the parts of Lélie inL’Étourdie, and Eraste inLe Dépit amoureux. His brother Louis BÉJART (c.1630-1678) was also in Molière’s company during the last years of its travels. He created many parts in hisbrother-in-law’s plays—Valère inLe Dépit amoureux, Dubois inLe Misanthrope, Alcantor inLe Mariage forcé, and Don Luis inLe Festin de Pierre—and was an actor of varied talents. In consequence of a wound received when interfering in a street brawl, he became lame and retired with a pension—the first ever granted by the company to a comedian—in 1670.

The more famous members of the family were two sisters.

Madeleine Béjart(1618-1672) was at the head of the travelling company to which her sister Geneviève (1631-1675)—who played as Mlle Hervé—and her brothers belonged, before they joined Molière in forming l’Illustre Théâtre (1643). With Molière she remained until her death on the 17th of February 1672. She had had an illegitimate daughter (1638) by an Italian count, and her conduct on her early travels had not been exemplary, but whatever her private relations with Molière may have been, however acrimonious and violent her temper, she and her family remained faithful to his fortunes. She was a tall, handsome blonde, and an excellent actress, particularly in soubrette parts, a number of which Molière wrote for her. Among her creations were Marotte inLes Précieuses ridicules, Lisette inL’École des maris, Dorine inTartuffe.

Her sister,Armande Grésinde Claire Elizabeth Béjart(1645-1700), seems first to have joined the company at Lyons in 1653. Molière directed her education and she grew up under his eye. In 1662, he being then forty and she seventeen, they were married. Neither was happy; the wife was a flirt, the husband jealous. On the strength of a scurrilous anonymous pamphlet,La Fameuse Comédienne, ou histoire de la Guérin(1688), her character has been held perhaps unduly low. She was certainly guilty of indifference and ingratitude, possibly of infidelity; they separated after the birth of a daughter in 1665 and met only at the theatre until 1671. But the charm and grace which fascinated others, Molière too could not resist, and they were reconciled. Her portrait is given in a well-known scene (Act iii., sc. 9) inLe Bourgeois gentilhomme. Mme Molière’s first appearance on the stage was in 1663, as Élise in theCritique de l’école des femmes. She was out of the cast for a short time in 1664, when she bore Molière a son—Louis XIV. and Henrietta of England standing sponsors. But in the spring, beginning with the fêtes given at Versailles by the king to Anne of Austria and Maria Theresa, she started her long list of important roles. She was at her best as Celimène—really her own highly-finished portrait—inLe Misanthrope, and hardly less admirable as Angélique inLe Malade imaginaire. She was the Elmire at the first performance ofTartuffe, and the Lucile ofLe Bourgeois gentilhomme. All these parts were written by her husband to display her talents to the best advantage and she made the most of her opportunities. The death of Molière, the secession of Baron and several other actors, the rivalry of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and the development of the Palais Royal, by royal patent, into the home of French opera, brought matters to a crisis with thecomédiens du roi. Well advised by La Grange (Charles Varlet, 1639-1692), Armande leased the Théâtre Guénégaud, and by royal ordinance the residue of her company were combined with the players from the Théâtre du Marais, the fortunes of which were at low ebb. The combination, known as thetroupe du roi, at first was unfortunate, but in 1679 they secured Mlle du Champmeslé, later absorbed the company of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and in 1680 the Comédie Française was born. Mme Molière in 1677 had married Eustache François Guérin (1636-1728), an actor, and by him she had one son (1678-1708). She continued her successes at the theatre until she retired in 1694, and she died on the 30th of November 1700.

BEK, ANTONY(d. 1311), bishop of Durham, belonged to a Lincolnshire family, and, having entered the church, received several benefices and soon attracted the attention of Edward I., who secured his election as bishop of Durham in 1283. When, after the death of King Alexander III. in 1285, Edward interfered in the affairs of Scotland, he employed Bek on this business, and in 1294 he sent him on a diplomatic errand to the German king, Adolph of Nassau. Taking part in Edward’s campaigns in Scotland, the bishop received the surrender of John de Baliol at Brechin in 1296, and led one division of the English army at the battle of Falkirk in 1298. Soon after his return to England he became involved in a quarrel with Richard de Hoton, prior of Durham. Deposed and excommunicated by Bek, the prior secured the king’s support; but the bishop, against whom other complaints were preferred, refused to give way, and by his obstinacy incurred the lasting enmity of Edward. In 1302, in obedience to the command of Pope Boniface VIII., he visited Rome on this matter, and during his absence the king seized and administered his lands, which, however, he recovered when he returned and submitted to Edward. He continued, however, to pursue Richard with unrelenting hostility, and was in his turn seriously harassed by the king. Having been restored to the royal favour by Edward II. who made him lord of the Isle of Man, the bishop died at Eltham on the 3rd of March 1311. A man of great courage and energy, chaste and generous, Bek was remarkable for his haughtiness and ostentation. Both as a bishop and as a private individual he was very wealthy, and his household and retinue were among the most magnificent in the land. He was a soldier and a hunter rather than a bishop, and built castles at Eltham and elsewhere.

Bek’s elder brother,Thomas Bek(d. 1293), bishop of St David’s, was a trusted servant of Edward I. He obtained many important and wealthy ecclesiastical positions, was made treasurer of England in 1279, and became bishop of St David’s in 1280. He was a benefactor to his diocese and died on the 12th of May 1293.

AnotherThomas Bek(1282-1347), who was bishop of Lincoln from 1341 until his death on the 2nd of February 1347, was a member of the same family.

Antony Bek must not be confused with his kinsman and namesake,Antony Bek(1279-1343), who was chancellor and dean of Lincoln cathedral, and became bishop of Norwich after a disputed election in 1337. He was a quarrelsome man, and after a stormy episcopate, died on the 19th of December 1343.

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