BEDCHAMBER, LORDS OF. [335] BEDCHAMBER, LORDS OF. 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 cere mony 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 forming a cabinet, and the former minis- | other inferior spiritual persons. But a ters were sent for, when they held a council and came to the following resolution, which is likely to settle the question on future occasions: "That for the purpose of giving to the administration that character of efficiency and stability and those marks of the constitutional support of the crown which are required to enable it to act usefully to the public service, it is reasonable that the great officers of the court, and situations in the household held by members of parliament, should be included in the political arrangements made in a change of the administration: but they (the ex-ministers) are not of opinion that a similar principle should be applied or extended to the offices held by ladies in her Majesty's household." The defeated ministry was then reinstated. BEDE-HOUSE, a term used for an alms-house. Hence, bedes-man, or beadsman, a person who resides in a bedehouse, or is supported from the funds appropriated for this purpose. The master of St. Katherine's Hospital, London, in the Regent's Park, has the right of appointing a number of non-resident pensioners on that foundation, who are termed bedesmen and bedeswomen. In the recently abolished Court of Exchequer in Scotland, the term bedesman, beadman, or beidman, was used to denote that class of paupers who enjoy the royal bounty. Bede is the Anglo-Saxon word for prayer, and as almsmen were bound to pray for the founder of the charity, they were hence called beadsmen. Sir Walter Scott describes the king's beadsmen as an order of paupers to whom the kings of Scotland were in the custom of distributing a certain alms, in conformity with the ordinance of the Roman Catholic church, and who were expected, in return, to pray for the royal welfare and that of the state. BEGGAR. [MENDICITY.] BENEFICE (from the Latin Beneficium), a term applied both by the canon law and the law of England to a provision for an ecclesiastical person. In its most comprehensive sense it includes the temporalities as well of archbishops, bishops, deans and chapters, abbots and iors, as of parsons, vicars, monks, and distinction is made between benefices attached to communities under the monastic rule (sub regulâ), which are called regular benefices, and those the possessors of which live in the world (in sæcule, which are thence called secular benefices. The writers on the canon law distinguish moreover between simple or sinecure benefices, which do not require residence, and to which no spiritual duty is attached but that of reading prayers and singing (as chaplainries, canonries, and chantries, and sacerdotal benefices, which are attended with cure of souls. Lord Coke says, "Beneficium is a large word, and is taken for any ecclesiastical promotion whatsoever." (2 Inst. 29.) But in modern English law treatises the term is generally confined to the temporalities of parsons, vicars, and perpetual curates, which in popular lazguage are called livings. The legal pos sessor of a benefice attended with cure of souls is called the incumbent. The his tory of the origin of benefices is involved in great obscurity. The property of the Christian church appears, for some cen turies after the apostolic ages, to have been strictly enjoyed in common. It was the duty of the officers called deacorS (whose first appointment is mentioned in Acts, cap. vi.) to receive the rents of the real estates, or patrimonies, as they were called, of every church. Of these, as well as of the voluntary gifts in the shape of alms and oblations, a sufficient portic was set apart, under the superintendence of the bishop, for the maintenance of the bishop and clergy of the diocese; another portion was appropriated to the expenses of public worship (in which were included the charge for the repairs of the church), and the remainder was bestowed upon the poor. This division was expressly inculcated by a canon of Gelasius, pope, or rather bishop, of Rome, A.D. 47. (See Father Paul's Treatise on Eccle siastical Benefices, cap. 7.) After the payment of tithes had become universal in the west of Europe, as a means of sup port to the clergy, it was enacted by ce of the capitularies of Charlemagne, that they should be distributed according t this division. When the bishoprics be gan to be endowed with lands and other | lay property. Hence, as the estates distributed in fief by the kings of France and Germany among their favoured nobles were originally termed beneficia [BENEFICIUM], this name was conferred, by a kind of doubtful analogy, upon the temporal possessions of the church. Thus, the bishoprics were supposed to be held by the bounty of the kings (who had by degrees usurped the right originally vested in the clergy and people of filling them up when vacant), while the temporalities of the inferior ecclesiastical offices were held of the bishops, in whose patronage and disposal they for the most part then were. The manner of investiture of benefices in those early times was probably the same as that of lay property, by the delivery of actual possession, or of some symbols of possession, as the ring and crozier, which were the symbols of investiture appropriated to bishoprics. firm possessions, the bishops, to encourage the foundation of churches, and to establish a provision for the resident clergy, gave up their portion of the tithes, and were afterwards by the canons forbidden to demand it, if they could live without it. Although the revenues of the church were thus divided, the fund from which they were derived remained for a long time entirely under the same administration as before. But by degrees every minister, instead of carrying the offerings made in his own church to the bishop, for the purpose of division, began to retain them for his own use. The lands also were apportioned in severalty among the resident clergy of each diocese. But these changes were not made in all places or all at one time, or by any general order, but by insensible degrees, as all other customs are introduced. (See Father Paul's Treatise on Benefices,' cap. 9 and 10.) "Some writers have attributed the origin of parochial divisions to a period as early as the fourth century; and it is not improbable that this change took place in some parts of the Eastern Empire, either in that or the succeeding age. Some of the Constitutions of Justinian seem to imply that in his time (the beginning of the sixth century) the system of ecclesiastical property, as it existed in the East, was very similar to that which has prevailed in Catholic countries in modern times." The churches, monasteries, and other pious foundations possessed landed and other property (slaves among the rest), which, by the Constitutions of Justinian, they were restrained from alienating, as they had been in the habit of doing to the detriment of their successors. (Authentica, Const. vii. "On not alienating ecclesiastical things, &c.") The general obscurity that hangs over the history of the Middle Ages prevents us from ascertaining, with precision, at what period the changes we have alluded to were introduced into the west of Europe. This, however, seems clear, that after the feudal system had acquired a firm footing in the west of Europe, during the ninth and tenth centuries, its principles were soon applied to ecclesiastical as well as Benefices being thus endowed, and recognised as a species of private property, their number gradually multiplied during the ages succeeding that of Charlemagne. In England especially several causes contributed to the rise of parochial churches. "Sometimes" (says Dr. Burn, Eccles. Law, title "Appropriation") "the itinerant preachers found encouragement to settle amongst a liberal people, and by their assistance to raise up a church and a little adjoining manse. Sometimes the kings, in their country vills and seats of pleasure or retirement, ordered a place of worship for their court and retinue, which was the original of royal free chapels. Very often the bishops, commiserating the ignorance of the country people, took care for building churches as the only way of planting or keeping up Christianity among them. But the more ordinary method of augmenting the number of churches depended on the piety of the greater lords, who, having large fees and territories in the country, founded churches for the service of their families and tenants within their dominion. It was this that gave a primary title to the patronage of laymen; it was this made the bounds of a parish commensurate to those of a manor; and it was this distinct property of lords and tenants that by degrees allotted new parochial bounds, by the adding of new auxiliary churches." For the origin and nature of ecelesias[ADVOWSON.] tical patronage in England as a subject of It appears, however, from the last-property, the rules of law which apply to mentioned author, that if there were any it as such, the limitations within which new fee erected within a lordship, or and the forms according to which it must there were any people within the pre-be exercised, and the mode by which it cinct not dependent on the patron, they may be vindicated, together with the were at liberty to choose any neighbouring respective rights of the bishop or ordinary, church or religious house, and to pay their the archbishop, and the crown, in the case tithes and make their offerings wherever of lapse, see AnvowSON; and also Burn's they received the benefits of religion. Ecclesiastical Law,' arts. "Advowson," This by degrees gave rise to the arbitrary "Benefice." The statute 3 & 4 Will. appropriation of tithes, which, in spite of IV. c. 27, made some important alterapositive enactment, continued to prevail till tions in the law on this subject. 1. By the end of the twelfth century, when Pope the old law, suits for recovery of ad Innocent III. by a decretal epistle to the vowsons were not within the statutes of archbishop of Canterbury, enjoined the limitations; but § 30 of the above-menpayment of tithes to the ministers of the tioned act subjects them to a period of respective parishes where every man dwelt. limitation of three successive incumbenThis injunction, though not having the cies, or sixty years, during which the enforce of a law, has been complied with ever joyment of the benefice has been by virtue since, so that it is now a universal rule of of a title adverse to that of the person in law in England, that tithes are due of com- stituting the suit. By § 33 the utmost mon right to the parson of the parish, unless period within which an advowson can be there be a special exemption. [TITHES.] recovered is limited to a hundred year The twelfth century was also the æra from the time of an adverse presentation of an important change in the manner without any intermediate exercise of the of investiture of ecclesiastical benefices right of patronage by the person insti in England. (Blackstone, vol. ii. p. 23; tuting the suit, or by any persons from Father Paul, c. 24.) Up to this time the whom he derives his title. The act abo simple donation of the patron was suf- lishes certain ancient remedies for the dis ficient to confer a legal title to a benefice, turbance of the right of patronage, (§ 361, provided the person to whom it was given so that except in certain cases, specified was in holy orders, for otherwise he must in §§ 37, 38 of the act, the sole method a be first presented to the bishop, who had vindicating the right now is by writ power to reject him in case of unfitness; Quare Impedit. [QUARE IMPEDIT.] but the popes, who had in the eleventh and twelfth centuries successfully contended against every other species of ecclesiastical investiture being exercised by laymen, now procured that the presentation of the patron should not be of itself sufficient to confer an ecclesiastical benefice, even though qualified by the discretionary power of rejection (in case the benefice was given to a layman) which was already vested in the bishop. This was the origin of the ceremonies of institution, which is the mode of investiture of the spiritualities; and induction, which is the mode of investiture of the temporalities of a benefice. Where the bishop was the patron of the benefice, the two forms of presentation and institution were united in that of collation. Although the popes, in denying to lay men the right of ecclesiastical investiture had still left them in possession of the substantial part of the patronage of bene fices, even this privilege was for some centuries not only very much questioned, but in many instances entirely wrested from them by papal encroachment (Father Paul, c. 30, et seq.; Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii. c. 7.) The first attacks by the popes upon the rights of private patrons (which took plac towards the latter end of the twelfth cen tury) assumed the form of letters of request called "mandates" or "expecta tives," praying that benefices might be conferred on particular individuals. What was first asked as a favour was soon after claimed as a right, and rules were laid down as to grants and revocations of expectatives. The popes next proceeded to claim the patronage of all benefices vacantia in curiâ, i. e. which fell vacant by the incumbents dying at the court of Rome. The number of these, through the management of that court, which contrived on various pretences to draw ecclesiastics of all ranks to Rome from different parts of Europe, became by degrees very considerable. But Clement V. in the beginning of the fourteenth century went beyond all his predecessors, by laying it down broadly as a maxim, that the full and free disposition of all ecclesiastical benefices belonged to the pope. (Clementines, lib. ii. tit. 5. c. 1; F. Paul, c. 35.) It followed as a consequence from this principle, that the pope could make reversionary grants, or provisions, as they were called, during the lives of the incumbents; and that he could reserve such benefices as he thought fit for his own peculiar patronage. At the same time, dispensations from the canons against nonresidence and pluralities, and permissions to hold benefices in commendam, were freely granted, so that by these and similar means in some instances fifty or sixty preferments were held by the same person at once. The evils of this system were felt all over Europe. The best benefices were everywhere filled with Italian priests, ignorant alike of the language and habits of the people to whose spiritual wants they were bound to minister. England in particular suffered so much from papal encroachments during the reign of Henry III, that the English deputies at the Council of Lyon (about A.D. 1245) complained to the pope that the foreign clergy drew annually from England upwards of 70,000 marks. This remonstrance produced no effect, but the system at length became so intolerable, that a determined plan of opposition to it was gradually formed in the principal nations of Western Europe. In this opposition our own ancestors took the lead, and their efforts were in the end completely successful. The parliament assembled at Carlisle in the 35th year of Edward I. Wrote a strong remonstrance to Pope Clement V. against the papal encroachments on the rights of patronage and the numerous extortions of the court of Rome. This remonstrance appears to have produced no effect, but it may be cited as a proof of the spirit of the times. The government of Edward II. was too feeble to act upon this spirit. The first prince who was bold enough to assert the power of the legislature to restrain the papal encroachments was Edward III. After complaining ineffectually to Clement VI. of the abuse of papal reservations, he (A.D. 1350) procured the famous Statute of Provisors (25 Edw. III. stat. 6) to be passed. This act provided that all elections and collations should be free according to law, and that in case any provision, collation, or reservation should be made by the court of Rome of any archbishopric, bishopric, dignity, or other benefice, the king should for that turn have the collation of such archbishopric or other dignities elective, &c. This statute was fortified by several others in this and the succeeding reigns, 27 Edw. III. stat. 1, c. 1; 38 Edw. III. stat. 1, c. 4; 3 Rich. II. c. 3; 7 Rich. II. c. 12 (which enacts that no alien* shall be capable of being presented to any ecclesiastical preferment); 12 Rich. II. c. 15; 13 Rich. II. stat. 2, c. 2 and 3; 16 Rich. II. c. 5; 2 Hen. IV. c. 3; 7 Hen. IV. c. 8; 3 Hen. V. c. 4. These statutes, which inflict very severe penalties on persons endeavouring to enforce the authority of papal bulls and provisions in England, are sometimes called, from the initial words of the writ issued in execution of the process under them, the statutes of præmunire; and the offence of maintaining the papal power is itself (according to Blackstone, vol. iv. p. 112) called by the name of præmunire. The statutes against papal provisions (though not very strictly enforced) re * Dr. Burn says:-"It seemeth that an alien, who is a priest, may be presented to a church." By 13 Rich. II, and 1 Hen. V. c. 7, Frenchmen were precluded holding benefices in England; and Lord Coke, on a review of the ancient statutes, is of opinion that the bishop ought not to admit an alien. The Bishop of Spalatro, an alien, was, however, appointed Dean of Windsor; and in Dr. Seaton's case, who was born in Scotland before the Union, it was held that he was capable to be presented to a benefice in England, and that so it would have been, had he been born in France, Spain, or in any friendly kingdom. |