Also 6–8 bed-, 6– bede-. [f. BEAD sb. + ROLL sb.]
† 1. orig. A list of persons to be specially prayed for. Obs. or arch.
c. 1500. Fabyan, Will, in Chron., Pref. 6. The soules above written, may be remembred in their parisshe bede rolle by the whole space of a yere after.
1504. in Bury Wills (1850), 100. A sangred to be payed for in the bedroule for my soule … by the space of a yeer.
1528. Tindale, Obed. Chr. Man, To Rdr. Here a mass-penny, there a trental, yonder dirige-money, and for his bead-roll.
1849. Rock, Ch. of Fathers, II. vii. 355. Those souls of the dead whose names were written upon the bead-roll just read out.
2. transf. A list or string of names; a catalogue; a long line, a pedigree; a long series.
1529. More, Supplic. Soules, Wks. 289/1. This he laith to ye onely fault of the cleargie, naming them in his bederolle, bishops, abbottes, [etc.].
1596. Spenser, F. Q., IV. ii. 32. Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled, On fames eternall bead-roll worthie to be fyled.
1603. Florio, Montaigne, III. viii. (1632), 523. A man … who … doth nothing but molest all men with the impertinent bed-rowle and register of his pedigrees.
1607. Heywood, Wom. Kilde, Wks. 1874, II. 115. ’Rac’d from the bed-roll of Gentility.
1612. Drayton, Poly-olb., xxii. (1748), 346. Wakefield battle next we in our bedroul bring.
1644. Quarles, Judgm. & Mercy, 286. The devil presents me with a bead-roll of my offences.
1826. Scott, in Lockhart (1839), VIII. 322. A whole beadroll of cousins.
1868. Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), II. viii. 218. The long bead-roll of the worthies of Bec.
1884. Symonds, Shaks. Predecessors, v. 191. The whole bede roll of inferior oracles.
3. A string of beads for counting prayers; a rosary.
1598. Hakluyt, I. 115. A certaine string with an hundreth or two hundreth nutshels thereupon, much like to our bead-roule.
1816. Coleridge, Lay Serm., 341. Superstition … with its pack of amulets, bead-rolls … fetisches.
1819. Wordsw., Waggoner, II. 9. Twelve strokes that clock would have been telling … Its bead-roll of midnight.
1866. Mrs. Stowe, Lit. Foxes, 22. Let us all make a bead-roll, a holy rosary, of all that is good and agreeable in our position … and charge ourselves to repeat it daily.
