John Charles Beckwith (British Army officer)

John Charles Beckwith (1789–1862) was a British army officer who was born in Nova Scotia.

He is best remembered for being injured in the Battle of Waterloo and for his charity work and philanthropy among the Waldensians of northern Italy.

He was subsequently employed on the staff of the Light Division, and he was repeatedly mentioned in despatches, becoming in 1814 a brevet-major, and after the Battle of Waterloo lieutenant-colonel and C.B.

His unwearied flow of spirits kept us in good humour during two days and nights in a dead calm, in the middle of the Bay of Biscay; when the sails and ropes flapped against the masts; and the vessel rocked from stem to stern incessantly.

Seven years later, whilst in the library of Apsley House in London, waiting to see the Duke of Wellington, he picked up a book by Prebendary of Durham, William Stephen Gilly about the history of the Protestant Waldensians, also known as the Vaudois, who lived in the Cottian Alps, in north-west Italy.

The Waldensians had, through skilled military means employed in a few defensible Alpine valleys, maintained their Reformation-type doctrines and championed the principle of freedom of religion since the 14th century in the face of many Papal, Savoyard and French efforts to eradicate them by violence and repression.