DAVID, archbishop of St Andrew's, and a 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 negociating his marriage with the court of France, he was there consecrated bishop of Mirepoix. Soon after his instalment 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 à 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 29, 1547. He was a haughty bigoted 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, in Ancient Geography, seven days journey to the west of Thebes, a district of the Nomos Oaïtes; 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 Ammoniaca; 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).