bestead

verb

1. (transitive)To help, assist.

   “She indifferently makes profit of all; even errours and dreames, doe profitably beſteade-her, as a loyall matter, to bring-vs vnto ſafetie and contentment.”

   “And they ſhall paſſe thꝛough it, hardly beſtead and hungry: and it ſhall come to paſſe, that when they ſhall be hungry, they ſhall fret themſelues, and curſe their King, and their God, and looke vpward.”

   “I received also the blessed Sacrament with many tears; though yet, in my opinion, they were not shed with that sense and grief, for only my having offended God, which might have served to save my soul; if the error into which I was brought by them who told me that some things were not mortal sins, (which afterward I saw plainly that they were) might not somewhat bestead me.”

   “"No, but you must tell me, no matter what; perhaps I may give you good counsel and bestead you in your trouble."”

2. (transitive)To profit; benefit; serve; avail.

   “With forty sous which remained, he went to a low gambling house, where fortune, or something surer to the skilful practitioner, so well besteaded him that he was able to clothe himself decently preparatory to entering Frascati's, the fashionable hell of Paris—a den of abomination early suppressed on the accession of Louis Philippe to the French throne.”

   “Abstract thought besteads immortality only in order that it may kill me as an individual being with an individual existence, and so make me immortal, pretty much in the same way as that famous physician in one of Holberg's plays,[…].”

3. (transitive)To take the place of; replace.

adj

1. (archaic, not-comparable)Placed (in a given situation); beset.

   “"I was indeed hard bestead, sir," burst in Oliver.”

2. (not-comparable, obsolete)Disposed mentally; affected.

   “sorrowfully bestead”

3. (not-comparable, obsolete)Provided; furnished.