Dining BED, lectus tricliniarius or discubitorium, that on which the ancients reclined at meals. The dining or discubitory beds were four or five feet in height. Three of these beds were ordinarily ranged by a square table (whence both the table and the apartment where it stood were called tri-
1 See Novi Commentarii Soc. Sc. G. tom. II.-VIII; and Commentar. tom. I.-V.
Bed of Justice (Beddoes.) clinum), in such a manner that one of the sides of the table remained open and accessible to the waiters. See ACCURATION.
Bed of Justice (Lit de Justice), in France, under the old régime, a throne upon which the king sat when he went to the parliament. The king never held a bed of justice unless for affairs that concerned the state, and then all the officers of parliament were clothed in scarlet robes. This ceremony in process of time became synonymous with an act of arbitrary power on the part of the sovereign. The last occasion on which a lit de justice was held, was on the 6th of August 1787, when the proposition for assembling the states-general was rejected.