Beadle Family History

English:: occupational name for a medieval court official from Middle English bedele (Old English bydel reinforced by Old French bedel). The word is of ancient Germanic origin and akin to Old English bēodan ‘to command’ and Old High German bodo ‘messenger’. In the Middle Ages a beadle in England and France was a junior official of a court of justice responsible for acting as an usher in a court carrying the mace in processions in front of a justice delivering official notices making proclamations (as a sort of town crier) and so on.

By Shakespeare's day a beadle was a sort of village constable appointed by the parish to keep order. Habitational name from Bedale in North Yorkshire so named from the Old English personal name Bēda + halh ‘nook of land’ or alternatively from one of the many minor places called Bedwell (for example in Essendon and Stevenage Hertfordshire) or Bidwell (for example in Titchmarsh Northamptonshire) with loss of w after a consonant being a common dialect development.