In 1573, Bedingfield published
Cardanus Comforte translated into English, ostensibly at the command of the
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This was an English version of the
De Consolatione (1542) of
Girolamo Cardano. It includes a dedication to Oxford dated 1 January 1571–2, in which Bedingfield claims that he had not sought publication but was making his work public only under compulsion by Oxford. This is followed by a letter to the translator and a verse to the reader, both written by the Earl of Oxford, and to these succeed addresses to the reader in prose and verse by
Thomas Churchyard. In 1584, at the request of Henry Macwilliam, another gentleman pensioner from Norfolk, Bedingfield published
The Art of Riding a translation of part of Book II of Claudio Corte's
Il cavallarizzo. In the dedication Bedingfield makes the same claim of modesty toward publication as his did in
Comforte. In 1588 he translated
Niccolò Machiavelli's
Florentine Histories, which was published in 1595 with a dedication to
Sir Christopher Hatton. In the prefatory "To the reader," Bedingfield makes similar disclaimers about publication and argues for absolute monarchy as the best form of government. ==Death==