Beadle - bedell
OED records many forms of the word beadle: bydel in Old English; budel, bedele, bidell, bidel, bydelle, beddell, betille in Middle English (and badal in Middle Scots; beedle, bedyl, bedyll, bedelle, bedle in the 15th and 16th centuries; until it assumed its "ordinary modern spelling" of beadle in the 18th century. The spellings bedel and bedell (and in Scotland beddal) lasted from Middle English through to the 18th century - and in some academic circles, still survive as necessary ceremonial offices in arcane rites. In modern times, it is always pronounced 'BEE-d'l', IPA: /ˈbiː dəl/.
A beadle is always a subordinate officer. The precise functions, responsibilities and powers of the office have varied, with law and custom, through the ages: OED lists
- someone who makes proclamations and announcements, such as a herald, a town crier, or the usher of a law-court;
- someone who brings messages or orders, particularly of a court in relation to money due, an under-bailiff or tipstaff; the executive representative of the owner or manager of an estate, such as the under-officers of a forest;
- a mace-bearer - one who walks at the head of a procession, etc, to indicate the rank of the person preceded. In Oxbridge, these are spelled conventionally bedel or bedell. Their duties are now chiefly processional: at Oxford there are four, the junior- or sub-bedel being the official attendant of the Vice-chancellor, before whom he bears a silver staff or mace; at Cambridge there are two, called esquire-bedells, both of whom officially walk in front of the Vice-chancellor with maces. (once there were two ranks of bedell, esquire bedels and yeomen bedels;
- an officer of a parish who keeps order in church, and has powers of petty punishment. It is this office that is held famously by Mr Bumble the Beadle, in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist.
