This incidental remark would alone prove him to have been a man of mark among the English Carmelites, even without the next sentence, in which we are told that while Beckley was engaged in the king's business Thomas Walden used to protect his interests at Cambridge against the complaints of his fellow-doctors there.
In his old age, after having spent many years at Cambridge, Beckley seems to have withdrawn to his native place, Sandwich, where, according to Bale, he became head of the Carmelite friary, and devoted the remainder of his life to study.
Dempster has claimed Beckley as a Scottish monk, and gives several details of his life, how he was exiled from Scotland and took up his abode in France, whence he was recalled by James III, but apparently preferred to remain in England when once he set foot in that country on his return journey.
But the authorities to whom Dempster appeals, Gilbert Brown (died 1612), and P. M. Thomas Sarracenus, an ex-professor of Bologna, can hardly be accepted as sufficient testimony for these statements in the face of so much contrary evidence.
The chief works assigned to him are similar in their titles to those of most mediaeval theologians, and consist of "Quodlibeta", "Quæstiones Ordinariæ", "Conciones Variæ", and one which, had it been preserved, might perhaps have been of some interest, entitled De Fraterculorum Decimis.