BEAUMONT

2 city of Texas, the county seat of Jefferson co. It is on the Neches River and several railroads, 80 miles northeast of Houston. It is the head of tidewater navigation and is an important shipping point. There are also important manufactures. In late years Beaumont has become one of the important centers of the petroleum fields of the State, and the Beaumont oil field is one of the largest in the world. Pop. 1920, 40,422. name of Eng. family, taken from Beaumont-le-Roger in Normandy; held lands in England, 1086; summoned to Parliament as barons by writ from 1309. (1703-81), abp. of Paris; noted for opposition to the Jansenists; pub. a formal condemnation of Rou eau’s Emile, to which R. replied in his famous Lettre a and FLETCHER, JOHN (1579-1625), Eng. dramatists; described by Swinburne as ‘the Dioscuri of Eng. poetry.’ B. was the s. of Sir Francis B., Judge oO the Common Pleas, and was_b. at gates Hall (now Pembroke OColl.), Oxford; left without taking a degree (1600), and entered the Inner Temple to read for the law. In London he made the acquaintance of Ben Jonson and other ‘Mermaid’ poets, wrote a translation of Ovid and some miscellaneous verses, and formed a friendship with F. The two poets lived together until B.’s marriage in 1613 with Ursula Isley, an heire . B. was buried in Westminster Abbey. Fletcher was the s. of Richard F., afterwards bp. of London; b. Rye; ed. Bene’t (now Corpus Christ i) Coll., Cambridge; like many univ. men of the period in search of fortune, drifted into the service of the theatre. He died of the plague.