Bedford, Hilkiah

Bedford, Hilkiah an English clergyman, was born in London, July 23, 1663. He was educated at Bradley, in Suffolk, and at St. John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. For refusing to take the oaths at the Revolution he was ejected from his preferment in Lincolnshire, and he afterwards kept a boarding-house for the Westminster scholars. In 1714 he was fined one hundred marks and imprisoned three years, for writing, printing, and publishing The Hereditary Right of the Crown of England Asserted (1713, fol.); the real author of which was George Harbin, another nonjuring clergyman. Bedford translated An Answer to Fontenelle's History of Oracles, and The Life of Dr. Barwick; andI published A Vindication of the Church of England (1710), and some other works. He died Nov. 26, 1724. See Chalmers, Biog. Dict. s.v.; Allibone, Dict. of Brit. and Amer. Authors, s.v.