BLIND BEGGAR OF BETHNAL GREEN, Henry, son and heir of sir Simon de Montfort.  At the battle of Evesham the barons were routed, Montfort slain, and his son Henry left on the field for dead.  A baron’s daughter discovered the young man, nursed him with care, and married him.  The fruit of the marriage was “pretty Bessee, the beggar’s daughter.”  Henry de Montfort assumed the garb and semblance of a blind beggar, to escape the vigilance of king Henry’s spies.

Day produced, in 1659, a drama called The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, and S. Knowles, in 1834, produced his amended drama on the same subject.  There is [or was], in the Whitechapel Road a public-house sign called the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.—­History of Sign-boards.

BLIND EMPEROR (The), Ludovig III. of Germany (880, 890-934).

BLIND HARPER (The), John Parry, who died 1739.

John Stanley, mnsician and composer, was blind from his birth (1713-1786).

BLIND HARRY, a Scotch minstrel of the fifteenth century, blind from infancy.  His epic of Sir William Wallace runs to 11,861 lines.  He was minstrel in the court of James IV.

BLIND MECHANICIAN (The).  John Strong, a great mechanical genius, was blind from his birth.  He died at Carlisle, aged sixty-six (1732-1798).

BLIND POET (The), Luigi Groto, an Italian poet called Il Cieco (1541-1585).  John Milton (1608-1674).

Homer is called The Blind Old Bard (fl.  B.C. 960).

BLIND TRAVELLER (The), lieutenant James Holman.  He became blind at the age of twenty-five, but, notwithstanding, travelled round the world, and published an account of his travels (1787-1857).

BLINKINSOP, a smuggler in Redgauntlet, a novel by sir W. Scott (time, George III.).

BLISTER, the apothecary, who says, “Without physicians, no one could know whether he was well or ill.”  He courts Lucy by talking shop to her.—­Fielding, The Virgin Unmasked.

BLITHE-HEART KING (The).  David is so called by Caedmon.

Those lovely lyrics written by his hand Whom Saxon Caedmon calls “The Blithe-heart King.”  Longfellow, The Poet’s Tale (ref. is to Psalm cxlviii. 9).

BLOCK (Martin), one of the committee of the Estates of Burgundy, who refuse supplies to Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy.—­Sir W. Scott, Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.).

BLOK (Nikkel), the butcher, one of the insurgents at Liege.—­Sir W. Scott, Quentin Durward (time, Edward IV.).

BLONDEL DE NESLE [Neel], the favorite trouvere or minstrel of Richard Coeur de Lion.  He chanted the Bloody Vest in presence of queen Berengaria, the lovely Edith Plantagenet.—­Sir W. Scott, The Talisman (time, Richard I.).

BLONDINA, the mother of Fairstar and two boys at one birth.  She was the wife of a king, but the queen-mother hated her, and taking away the three babes substituted three puppies.  Ultimately her children were restored to her, and the queen-mother with her accomplices were duly punished.—­Comtesse D’Aunoy, Fairy Tales ("Princess Fairstar,” 1682).