(David), archbishop of St Andrew's, and cardinal of Rome, in the early part of the 16th century, was born in 1494. Pope Paul III. raised him to the degree of a cardinal in December 1538; and being employed by James V. in negotiating his marriages with the court of France, he was there consecrated bishop of Mirepoix. Soon after his installment as archbishop of St Andrew's, he promoted a furious persecution of the reformers in Scotland; when the king's death put a stop, for a time, to his arbitrary proceedings, he being then excluded from affairs of government, and confined. He raised however so strong a party, that, upon the coronation of the young queen Mary, he was admitted of the council, made chancellor, and procured commission as legate a latere from the court of Rome. He now began to renew his persecution of heretics; and among the rest, of the famous Protestant preacher Mr George Wishart, whose sufferings at the stake the cardinal viewed from his window with apparent exultation. It is pretended, that Wishart at his death foretold the murder of Beaton; which indeed happened shortly after, he being assassinated in his chamber, May 29th, 1547. He was a haughty bigotted churchman, and thought severity the proper method of suppressing heresy: he had great talents, and vices that were no less conspicuous. See Scotland.

BEATORUM insula (anc. geog.), seven days journey to the west of Thebes, a district of the Nomos Oaftes; called an island, because surrounded with sand, like an island in the sea, (Ulpian); yet abounding in all the necessaries of life, though encompassed with vast sandy deserts, (Strabo); which some suppose to be a third Oasis, in the Regio Ammoniacæ; and the site of the temple of Ammon answers to the above description, as appears from the writers on Alexander's expedition thither. It was a place of relegation or banishment for real or pretended criminals from which there was no escape, (Ulpian).