BELASYSE, John (1615-89)

BELASYSE (BELLASIS), John (1615–89)

cr. 27 Jan. 1645 Bar. BELASYSE.

First sat 1 June 1660; last sat 1 Aug. 1678

MP Thirsk 1640 (Apr.), 1640 (Nov.)-6 Sept. 1642.

b. 24 June 1615, 2nd s. of Sir Thomas Belasyse†, 2nd bt. (later Visct. Fauconberg) of Newburgh Priory, Coxwold, Yorks. (N. Riding) and Barbara (d. 18 Mar. 1619), da. of Sir Henry Cholmley‡, of Whitby, Yorks. (N. Riding); bro. of Hon. Henry Belasyse‡. educ. Camb.? admitted c.1627?;1 ‘Acad. of Signior Arnolfen’, Paris, France, c.1633-5;2 G. Inn, admitted 16 March 1641. m. (1) by 11 Feb. 1637, Jane (d. bef. 12 Dec. 1657), da. of Sir Robert Boteler, of Watton Woodhall, Herts., 3s. d.v.p. 2da. (1 d.v.p.); (2) c. July 1659, Anne (d.1662), da. and coh. of Sir Robert Crane of Chilton, Suff., wid. of Sir William Armyne‡, 2nd bt. s.p; (3) by 18 June 1666,3 Anne (d.1694), da. of John Paulet, 5th mq. of Winchester, 2s. d.v.p., 9da. (5 d.v.p.). d. 10 Sept. 1689; will 22 Apr.-1 May 1689, pr. 7 May 1690.4

Capt. gent. pens. 1667-72;5 PC 17 July 1686-?;6 first ld., of the treasury 4 Jan. 1687-30 Nov. 1688;7 chan. (in common), duchy of Lancaster 1687-8.8

Commr. array, Yorks., Lincs. 1642, sewers, Lincs. and Newark hundred 1660, 1664, Yorks. (E. Riding), 1664, 1666, Hull 1667;9 corporations, Hull 1662;10 ld. lt. Yorks. (E. Riding), 1660-73; high steward, Hull 1670-3.11

Capt., coy of horse 1642-?; col., regt. of ft. (roy.) 1642-4; gov., York and lt. gen., Yorks. Jan.-Apr. 1644, Newark 1646; capt. gen., King’s Lifeguard of Horse, Sept. 1645-May 1646;12 gov., Newark and lt. gen., Notts., Lincs. and Rutland Oct. 1645-May 1646;13 col., regt. of ft. July-Oct. 1660, Jan.-May 1673;14 gov., Hull 16 Aug. 1660-73;15 gen., capt. gen. and c.-in-c., Tangiers 1665-7.16

Associated with: Worlaby Hall, Worlaby, Lincs.;17 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Westminster (by 1665);18 Bloomsbury Square, Westminster (from 1668);19 St James’s Square, Westminster;20 Whitton, Twickenham, Mdx.21

Likenesses: oil on canvas by Gilbert Jackson, 1636, NPG 5948; line engraving by Robert White, aft. Sir Anthony van Dyck, late 17th century, NPG D29422; miniature by Samuel Cooper, Victoria and Albert Museum.

John Belasyse was a younger son in one of Yorkshire’s leading gentry families, based primarily in the North Riding but with estates in north Lincolnshire as well. One of these, Worlaby, was settled on him upon his marriage in 1637, which gave him a lifelong interest in the Humberside region. John followed his father, Sir Thomas Belasyse† (Viscount Fauconberg from 1643) in becoming a Catholic royalist. He left the Commons in September 1642 and became one of the leading royalist commanders in the civil wars. He was defeated and captured by Thomas Fairfax‡, Lord Fairfax of Cameron [S], at Selby on 11 Apr. 1644 but was released from captivity in the Tower in January 1645 and upon his reunion with Charles I was created Baron Belasyse of Worlaby. In the autumn of 1645 Charles commissioned him captain general of the lifeguard of horse and governor of Newark-on-Trent. He belligerently and defiantly maintained this garrison, the last stand of the royalists, during a 26-week siege until the king, handing himself over to the Scots, ordered him to surrender it, which was effected 8 May 1646.22

From the early 1650s Belasyse became a member of the ‘Sealed Knot’ and spent much of that decade under the suspicion of the council of state and imprisoned in the Tower.23 Yet royalist leaders did not fully trust him; he did not appear in arms during any of the rebellions of the 1650s, and was not entrusted with a role in the rising of August 1659.24 He may have been hesitant to act owing to his growing family and local connections with prominent members of the Interregnum regime. Fellow Yorkshireman Col. John Lambert‡ procured overseas passes for him and protected him before the council of state.25 At the Restoration, when the tables were turned and Lambert was arraigned and imprisoned, Belasyse held Lambert’s Yorkshire estates in trust for the benefit of his wife and children.26 Belasyse’s nephew Thomas Belasyse, 2nd Viscount Fauconberg, son of his elder brother, Henry Belasyse‡, married Mary, the daughter of Oliver Cromwell‡ in 1657. In 1659 Belasyse himself married as his second wife Anne, the widow of Sir William Armine‡, son and namesake of the leading Parliamentarian and member of the council of state, Sir William Armine‡.

In early May 1660 Belasyse was among those peers who had been ennobled or promoted by Charles I after 1642 who demanded entrance to the Convention House of Lords from George Monck, later duke of Albemarle. Monck rebuffed their request, telling Belasyse himself ‘that our desire had raised much noises’ among the Presbyterian peers already in the House.27 Belasyse did not sit in the House for the first time until 1 June 1660, the day after the House agreed to admit the Oxford creations according to the king’ request. He was not prominent in the Convention, only attending just a little over a quarter of its meetings until the dissolution on 29 Dec. 1660. His absence was most likely caused by the responsibilities in Lincolnshire and Humberside that he took on in the first weeks of the Restoration. His influence in this region was quickly recognized and he was commissioned lord lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire on 26 July 1660 and governor of the garrison of Kingston-upon-Hull later in December. It was probably because of his intention to take up his lord lieutenancy that on 23 July the House granted Belasyse leave to be absent ‘for some time’. He registered his proxy with his fellow former royalist officer Thomas Wentworth, earl of Cleveland, two days later; it was not vacated until Belasyse’s return to the House on 13 Nov. 1660. Through his lieutenancy of the East Riding and local landholding Belasyse was able to exert electoral influence in the Humber region, and he almost certainly had a prominent role in the selection of his former subordinate officer at Newark and current lieutenant governor at Hull, Anthony Gilby‡, as Member for Hull in 1661.

Belasyse was more active and attentive in the first session, in 1661-2, of the Cavalier Parliament, when he came to 71 per cent of the sitting days, and most particularly in the early meetings of spring 1661 before the summer recess, when he was present at just over three-quarters of the meetings. He was there on 11 May 1661 when he helped to introduce George Booth, as the newly created Baron Delamer. He took an active part in legislation concerning fen drainage, particularly in Lincolnshire, and on both 10 and 19 June 1661 chaired meetings of the committees dealing with bills for Lindsey Level, Hatfield Chase and the fenlands drained by Sir Anthony Thomas. He reported the bill on Lindsey Level to the House on 21 June as fit to pass with some amendments.28 In the part of the session after the summer recess (when he attended 68 per cent of the meeting days) he was appointed on 4 Mar. 1662 to the committee for the bill to drain Antholne Level in Lincolnshire. At the prorogation, on 19 May 1662, the House appointed Belasyse as one of a delegation of four peers to attend the king to advise him to protect the works on Bedford Level, despite Parliament’s failure to pass an act concerning those works.

He was involved in other matters which had a Yorkshire and Humberside dimension to them. On 1 July 1661 he was placed on the committee to consider the former proceedings concerning the court of York for the northern counties and the petition submitted to revive that court, which he himself had signed.29 Just before the recess he was placed on the committees for both the militia and the corporation bills and after the latter measure’s passage he was not surprisingly appointed a commissioner to enforce the terms of the act in Hull.30 He was specifically added, on 6 Dec. 1661, to the committee for the bill concerning Trinity Church in Hull. He later chaired, on the two separate days 17 Feb. and 15 Apr. 1662, meetings of the committee on the bill to regulate cloth manufacture in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and he reported the bill as fit to pass with amendments the following day.31 Belasyse also signed the protest of 6 Feb. 1662 against the passage of the bill to restore to Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, lands he had legally conveyed during the Interregnum. Belasyse’s name appears in two contemporary manuscript lists of the protesters to this bill, though his signature was among those cut off from the original protest when the manuscript Journal was bound up in volumes, and consequently omitted from the official Journal when it was printed in the eighteenth century.32

Belasyse only came to just over half of the meeting days of the session of 1663 and left the session early on 3 June 1663. Six days later he registered his proxy with Albemarle. Through this proxy Belasyse was considered by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, to be a supporter of the attempt by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon in July. Belasyse was back in the House on 21 Mar. 1664 and came to all but three of the meetings of that short session. Among the four committees to which he was named was that for the bill to sell part of the lands of William Armine‡ at Ingoldsby in Lincolnshire to raise portions for his two daughters. Belasyse took a keen personal interest in this bill as he was closely connected to the Armine family. As noted above, his second wife Anne had been Armine’s widow and in October of that same year Belasyse arranged the marriage of his only son from his first marriage, Sir Henry Belasyse‡, to his stepsister, Susan Armine, the younger daughter of Anne and the late Sir William. Susan Armine’s portion was at stake in this bill. On 21 Apr. 1664 Belasyse presented the committee considering the bill with a paper attesting to the consent of all parties involved.33 In the following session of 1664-5 he came to 69 per cent of the sitting days and was named to four committees, including the bill for Deeping Fen. He last sat in the House in this session on 24 Feb. 1665 and on that day registered his proxy with James Stuart, duke of York.

What prompted his departure and his royal proxy recipient was his appointment earlier in the year as captain general and commander-in-chief of Tangier. He received his formal instructions for this mission on 24 Feb. 1665 and set off almost immediately.34 Belasyse, however, returned from Tangier seemingly prematurely, in late April 1666, leaving his lieutenant governor Henry Norwood‡ in charge.35 Samuel Pepys‡ and Sir Hugh Cholmley‡, prominent members of the Tangier Committee, thought that both the baron and Norwood were ‘men that do only mind themselves’ by which ‘the garrison will never come to anything’. Pepys had many dealings with Belasyse upon his return and considered him dishonest, rapacious and greedy, ‘as very a false villain as ever was born’, particularly when it also became evident that he was trying to sell his governorship to the highest bidder and procure illicit profits through prize ships.36

Having returned from Tangier, Belasyse was able to sit in 84 per cent of the sitting days of the turbulent session of 1666-7. On 30 Oct. 1666 he was placed on a group of 12 members who were to join with a similar group from the Commons to present Parliament’s vote against the importation of French commodities to the king. The following day he helped to introduce into the House Richard Arundell, Baron Arundell of Trerice. On 24 Nov. fellow Catholic Marmaduke Langdale, 2nd Baron Langdale, registered his proxy with Belasyse for the remainder of the session. At this time, Belasyse’s son and heir Sir Henry Belasyse‡ was returned for the Humberside borough of Great Grimsby in a by-election on 6 Nov. 1666. Sir Henry was killed in a drunken duel in August 1667, leaving Belasyse without a direct male heir.37

Belasyse’s early departure from Tangier did not sit at all well with Clarendon, York or Henry Bennet, Baron (later earl of) Arlington. They all reflected severely on him at a meeting of the Tangier committee in February 1667 but none of their criticisms, at least according to Pepys, appear to have troubled Belasyse at all.38 A convenient way out of the impasse was provided by the old earl of Cleveland’s death on 25 Mar. 1667, by which Belasyse was able to take up the reversion of the captainship of the gentlemen pensioners which had been promised to him in 1660 and enabled him to resign his post at Tangier without loss of face.39 He presented this in the best possible light to a sceptical Pepys on 7 Apr. when he boasted that the king had demanded he make a choice between his commission as commander of Tangier or his new post as captain of the gentlemen pensioners, ‘whereas I know the contrary, that they had a mind to have him away from Tangier … and I think he is as good a dissembler as any man else; and a fine person he is for person, and proper to lead the Pensioners, but a man of no honour nor faith I doubt’.40 This view is echoed by the author (perhaps Andrew Marvell‡, who knew Belasyse well from Hull politics) of the satirical poem from 1673, ‘Advice to a Painter to draw the Duke’, where the painter is instructed to ‘Let Bellasis’s autumnal face be seen,/ Rich with the spoils of a poor Algerine,/ Who trusting in him, was by him betray’d,/ And so should we were his advice obey’d./ That hero once won honour by the sword;/ He got his wealth by breaking of his word’.41

Belasyse was diligent in the sittings of winter 1667 which saw the impeachment and eventual banishment of Clarendon, attending 80 per cent of them before the Christmas adjournment of 19 Dec. 1667. When the session resumed between February and May 1668, Belasyse came to 59 per cent of the sittings, and on 30 Mar. 1668 the House gave him leave to be absent for a fortnight, though he returned on 11 April. He was present for the adjournment on 9 May 1668 and then the prorogation, more than a year later, on 1 Mar. 1669 and was again in the House for all but three of the meetings of the short session of the winter of 1669.

A family issue preoccupied him in the first part of the following session of 1670-71, and he diligently attended the House throughout March and April 1670. On 12 Mar. 1670 the House gave a first reading to the bill for settling the estate of Susan Belasyse, the widow of Belasyse’s deceased son Sir Henry, and mother of Belasyse’s heir presumptive, his young grandson, also named Henry Belasyse, later 2nd Baron Belasyse. This bill was committed two days later and Belasyse himself was made part of the committee to consider the bill, which appears to have sailed through committee relatively easily, for Richard Sackville, 5th earl of Dorset, reported the bill on 17 March and it was passed the following day. The bill received the royal assent on the day Parliament was adjourned for the summer, 11 Apr. 1670. Years later, on 1 Apr. 1674, Susan Belasyse, reputedly ‘a woman of much life and great vivacity, but of a very small proportion of beauty’, was created suo jure Baroness Belasyse of Osgodby for life, largely, at least according to Burnet, as recompense for desisting from her claims on the duke of York, who was said to have given her a signed promise of marriage.42 Belasyse came to 78 per cent of the sitting days of that part of the session which met in October 1670 after the summer recess. He was named to 22 committees on legislation, one of which was for the bill to make the River Trent navigable around Boston in Lincolnshire. He chaired a committee meeting on this bill and was appointed a manager for a conference on 13 Mar. 1671 to discuss amendments.43 The day after this conference John Granville, earl of Bath, a close friend of the king, registered his proxy with Belasyse until the prorogation on 22 Apr. 1671.

Charles II, at this point in secret alliance with Louis XIV, evidently saw the Catholic Belasyse as a suitable envoy to the French king and only a few days after the prorogation Belasyse was dispatched to pay Charles II’s compliments to Louis at Dunkirk.44 In March 1672 Belasyse resigned as captain of the gentlemen pensioners, replaced by his nephew Fauconberg, and perhaps with the promise that he would replace John Russell‡ as colonel of the first regiment of foot guards. This promotion was not effected, but in early January 1673 Belasyse was given command of his own regiment of foot.45 On 4 Feb. 1673, the first day of the session that met after the long prorogation, Belasyse helped to introduce to the House another military officer, Louis de Duras, Baron Duras (later 2nd earl of Feversham). Belasyse proceeded to sit in all but two of the sittings in this session but in compliance with the first Test Act passed in March 1673 he resigned his remaining posts and offices. James Scott, duke of Monmouth, was appointed lord lieutenant of the East Riding and governor and high steward of Kingston-upon-Hull in his stead, while James Compton, 3rd earl of Northampton, replaced him as colonel of his infantry regiment.46

Belasyse could still sit in the House and he was present in the House at the prorogation on 20 Oct. 1673 when he helped to introduce to the House Richard Butler, earl of Arran [I], recently created Baron Butler of Weston in the English peerage.47 Despite the increasing anti-Catholic mood of Parliament, Belasyse attended a little over three-fifths of the sittings of the session which met in the first months of 1674 to discuss the peace proposals to end the war with the United Provinces. He took the Jacobean oath of allegiance on 26 Jan. 1674 and the following day, after the House was informed that the Catholic John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester (father of Belasyse’s third wife), was being prosecuted for recusancy during time of Parliament, it ordered that Winchester, Belasyse and a number of other Catholic peers were to enjoy their privilege and be protected from any such proceedings. By this time Belasyse may have been seen as a spokesman for the English Catholic peers. From mid February 1674 Belasyse held the maximum of two proxies, and both were from Catholic lords: Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour (from 14 Feb.) and Christopher Roper, 5th Baron Teynham (16 February). He did not have long to exercise these proxies, as the session was prorogued barely a week later, on 24 Feb. 1674.

Parliament did not meet again until April 1675, when Belasyse attended just under half of the sessions of that spring. During the session the lord treasurer Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), introduced his controversial ‘non-resisting’ test bill. Danby believed that Belasyse would support this measure; Belasyse was not among those who strongly opposed it, for he was in the House during proceedings on the bill in April and May 1675 and did not put his name to any of the four protests against the progress of the bill, nor does his name appear among those opposing the bill in the Letter from a Gentleman of Quality. Yet in the subsequent session of autumn 1675, when he attended a similar proportion of sittings (52 per cent), he opposed Danby and the court by voting on 20 Nov. 1675 in favour of the address to dissolve Parliament. He did not, however, take the added step of subscribing to the protest against the close rejection of that motion. Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, was also initially uncertain where to place Belasyse among the political groupings in Parliament. In his list of lay lords, drawn up in spring 1677, Shaftesbury initially considered Belasyse as ‘triply vile’, but it appears from the manuscript that he later altered this estimation to merely ‘vile’.

This change of mind may have come after a sympathetic visit from the Catholic baron, for on 11 Apr. 1677 Belasyse, who had been a regular attender of this session since its first day of 15 Feb. (at 65 per cent), received permission from the House to visit Shaftesbury and the other ‘country’ lords in the Tower. The session was adjourned five days later, on 16 Apr. 1677, and resumed on 21 May, when Belasyse again attended, although he did not come to any of the four remaining sittings of this short meeting of Parliament. He was present again when Parliament eventually met again for business on 28 Jan. 1678, though he only attended 37 per cent of this part of the session. He gave his proxy to his Protestant nephew Fauconberg, on 21 Feb. 1678, but this was cancelled when he returned to the House on 1 March. He probably came back in order to protect his property interests, for on the last days of February he and Robert Bruce, earl of Ailesbury, complained to the committee considering a supplementary act for the draining of Deeping Fen that their privilege of Parliament had been infringed by the commissioners of sewers, who had made decrees which deprived Belasyse, Ailesbury and John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Stratton, of much of their land in Lincolnshire.48 On 27 Mar. Belasyse was also placed on the committee to draft reasons why the House could not agree with the Commons in its address calling for an ‘immediate’ war with France. By this time Belasyse’s attendance in the House was declining steeply, and he only attended ten sittings of the subsequent session of spring and summer 1678; he last sat in the House at the prorogation of 1 August.

Belasyse’s reputation as an open Catholic and a military leader made him an obvious target for those who fomented allegations of a Popish Plot in autumn 1678. In their testimonies before the Privy Council and Parliament Titus Oates, William Bedloe, Stephen Dugdale, Miles Prance and others repeatedly claimed that Belasyse had been commissioned by the Pope to be general of the Catholic army that was to subdue England after the king’s execution, and that he had also supervised and directed the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.49 Belasyse and four other Catholic lords (William Herbert, earl, later marquess, of Powis, William Howard, Viscount Stafford, William Petre, 4th Baron Petre and Belasyse’s former proxy donor Arundell of Wardour) were arrested and incarcerated as early as 25 Oct. 1678, only a few days into the session, and formally impeached for treason by the Commons on 5 December.

The articles of impeachment against Belasyse and the Catholic peers were not delivered by the time of the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament on 24 Jan. 1679. However, by an order of 19 Mar. 1679, in the first days of the first Exclusion Parliament, it was resolved ‘that the dissolution of the last Parliament doth not alter the state of the impeachments brought up by the Commons in that Parliament’ and the proceedings were allowed to continue. The detailed articles of impeachment against Belasyse and the other Catholic lords were finally submitted to the House on 7 Apr. 1679. When the peers were summoned to the bar of the House two days later to hear and answer the articles against them, Belasyse was not present at all as he was ‘so ill and lame with the gout, that he is not able to stir’. He was allowed to put in his answer in writing, which was submitted to the House on 15 April. Here he defiantly refused to answer the charges against them, because they were so vague and imprecise, both in terms of the time in which Belasyse was allegedly conspiring for a Catholic overthrow of the government and the circumstances by which he was supposed to do it. The Commons not surprisingly found this answer ‘argumentative and evasive’ and Belasyse, despite his gout, was forced to appear personally at the bar on 25 Apr. to hear this reprimand and be given another chance to submit his plea. His second plea was short and terse, merely pleading his innocence of the charges against him while reserving to himself ‘all advantages and benefits of exception to the generality, uncertainty and other insufficiencies of the said articles, of which he humbly prays that notice may be taken’. Much of May 1679 was taken up by disagreements between the Houses over the procedures to be followed for the trials of the peers and the order in which they were to take place, arguments which led in part to the prorogation and ultimate dissolution of the Parliament on 17 July.

The trial of Belasyse proceeded no further in the following two Parliaments, but his fellow prisoner Stafford was found guilty before the House on 7 Dec. 1680 and was subsequently executed. Belasyse thus remained under arrest for just over five years, until Petre’s death on 5 Jan. 1684 prompted York to insist that the three surviving prisoners be brought before the next session of king’s bench to be bailed. Belasyse was bailed on 12 Feb. 1684, with Fauconberg, Ailesbury, Charles Fane, 3rd earl of Westmorland, and Sir John Talbot‡ acting as sureties in £5,000 each.50 On 22 May 1685, just a few months after York’s accession as James II, the House responded to a petition from the three surviving Catholic peers, by resolving to vacate the order of 19 Mar. 1679 allowing impeachments to continue from one Parliament to the next. This effectively ended proceedings in the House against Belasyse and his companions. A few days later James II followed this by entering a nolle prosequi to the prosecution in the ordinary courts.51

As a Catholic, Belasyse could still not take his seat in the House, by the terms of the 1678 Test Act, but under James II he was soon returned to favour and influence. He was sworn to the king’s Privy Council on 17 July 1686 and was made first lord of the treasury in January 1687 when it was put into commission following the dismissal of Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester.52 Despite his prominent position in James’s administration, Belasyse expressed and represented the moderate opinions of the older, more established, English Catholics, who were largely ignored by James in favour of the more zealous Father Petre and those of that circle. According to Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, Belasyse expressed his concerns over James’s policies after the king’s speech before the reassembled Parliament in November 1685 in which he spoke of his intention to dispense Catholic army officers from the provisions of the Test Act. ‘My dear Lord’, Ailesbury recounts Belasyse saying, ‘who could be the framer of this speech? I date my ruin and that of all my persuasion from this day’. Ailesbury also recommended Belasyse to James II as a suitable lord lieutenant of Ireland in place of Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, and in place of the king’s favourite, Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnel [I]: ‘If your majesty will have a Roman Catholic, take an English one, with an English estate, and an English heart’. James II rebuffed this suggestion claiming, accurately, that Belasyse is ‘so afflicted with the gout that he cannot travel’. Ailesbury himself was surprised by Belasyse’s decision to head the treasury in 1687, ‘for his health was so bad, and to my knowledge he desired nothing but to live at ease and quiet, having so plentiful an estate and but four daughters to inherit’.53 Belasyse resigned all his posts in the first days of December 1688, when James II attempted to placate the opposition by agreeing to dismiss his Catholic officers although just when his membership of the Privy Council can be said to have ended is difficult to establish as his resignation is not recorded in the council minutes. He had never been a particularly assiduous member and his last recorded attendance was at the extraordinary council meeting called to attest to the birth of the prince of Wales on 22 October.54

When William of Orange’s followers were discussing, on 24 Dec. 1688, the expulsion of Catholics from the capital, William Cavendish, 4th earl (later duke) of Devonshire, pleaded successfully for Belasyse’s exemption.55 On 3 Mar. 1689 Belasyse confided to Sir John Reresby‡ that ‘he had been very averse (though a papist) to the measures used in that reign [James II’s], for promoting that religion … but his counsel was suspected as coming from a man that the hot party informed the King was old and timorous, and that having a good estate was in fear to hazard it.’ At this juncture Belasyse also doubted that James would be restored, there being ‘so many great men concerned in this revolt’. Belasyse’s ambivalence towards his Catholic king is suggested by the claim made by George Savile, marquess of Halifax, that Belasyse refused to lend James £1,000 before he made his attempt to flee the country.56

Belasyse died a few months after this conversation with Reresby, on 10 Sept. 1689. He died a very rich man and was able to bequeath to his wife and four unmarried daughters land and tithes in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire; houses and grounds in St James’s Square, Worcester Buildings and Great Queen Street in Westminster, in Newgate Street, Friday Street, Thames Street, Bread Street and Blackfriars in the City of London, and in Twickenham and Richmond in Middlesex; as well as the fee farm rents from the Great Level and from lands in Durham. Contemporaries estimated that he left £40,000 in total to his daughters and a jointure of £1,200 p.a. to his widow, the daughter of the Catholic marquess of Winchester (and sister of the Whig Charles Powlett, duke of Bolton).57 The title and majority of estates were inherited by his grandson and heir Henry Belasyse, 2nd Baron Belasyse.

C.G.D.L.

  • 1 HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 376.
  • 2 Ibid. 377.
  • 3 Pepys Diary, vii. 171.
  • 4 TNA, PROB 11/401.
  • 5 CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 61; 1667-8, p. 136; 1671-2, p. 190; Add. 70081, newsletter of 16 Mar. 1672.
  • 6 TNA, PC 2/71, p. 300; HMC Hastings, ii. 202.
  • 7 CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 330, 345; HMC Hastings, ii. 202; CTB, 1685-9, p. 1141.
  • 8 CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 386, 389; HMC Hastings, ii. 202.
  • 9 TNA, C181/7, pp. 75, 239, 256, 259, 406, 420.
  • 10 J. Tickell, Hist. of Kingston-upon-Hull, 525; HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1, 275.
  • 11 CSP Dom. 1670, pp. 388, 588; 1673, p. 480.
  • 12 Newman, Royalist Officers, 21-22; HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 387-8; The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, ed. C.H. Firth, 89.
  • 13 Clarendon, Rebellion, iv. 214; LJ, vi. 310.
  • 14 Firth and Davies, Regimental History of Cromwell’s Army, 416-17; Dalton, Army Lists, i. 134; CTB, 1660-7, p. 67; CSP Dom. 1673, p. 287.
  • 15 CSP Dom. 1660, p. 429; 1673, p. 194; Dalton, i. 13.
  • 16 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1660-85, pp. 119, 128-30, 268.
  • 17 CSP Dom. 1637-8, pp. 158, 184; HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 394-5.
  • 18 Pepys Diary, vi. 9.
  • 19 Ibid. ix. 202.
  • 20 Survey of London, xxix. 369; xxx. 546.
  • 21 VCH Mdx. iii. 95-96; HMC 7th Rep. 373; Add. 40860, f. 35.
  • 22 HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 379-85, 388-9; LJ, viii. 251, 296.
  • 23 HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 395-9.
  • 24 CCSP, iii. 11; HMC 10th Rep. VI. 195.
  • 25 CSP Dom. 1654, p. 437; 1655, p. 212; 1655-6, p. 578; CCSP, iv. 432.
  • 26 CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 478; 1663-4, pp. 30, 166, 178, 183.
  • 27 Chatsworth, Cork mss misc. box 1, Burlington diary, 4 and 5 May 1660.
  • 28 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, pp. 21, 30-31.
  • 29 HL/PO/JO/1/1/306.
  • 30 Hist. of Kingston-upon-Hull, 525; HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1, 275.
  • 31 HL/PO/CO/1/1, pp. 138-9, 251.
  • 32 Add. 33589, f. 220; Bodl. Carte 77, f. 520.
  • 33 HL/PO/CO/1/1, p. 445.
  • 34 CSP Dom. Addenda 1660-85, pp. 119, 128-30; Bodl. Carte 75, f. 153.
  • 35 Bodl. Clarendon 83, f. 257.
  • 36 Pepys Diary, vi. 9, 306; vii. 99, 130, 265; viii. 117, 127; Bodl. Clarendon 84, ff. 303-6, 406-10.
  • 37 Add. 75354, ff. 105-6.
  • 38 Pepys Diary, viii. 61.
  • 39 Bodl. Carte 222, ff. 150-1; CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 594.
  • 40 Pepys Diary, viii. 154-5.
  • 41 POAS, i. 218.
  • 42 Burnet, ii. 16-17.
  • 43 HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 388.
  • 44 Brit. Dip. Reps 1509-1688, p. 119; TNA, PRO 31/3/126 p. 47.
  • 45 CSP Dom. 1671-2, p. 190; 1673, p. 287; Add. 28052, f. 77; TNA, PRO 31/3/128 pp. 10, 11, 13; Dalton, i. 134; CTB, 1660-7, p. 67.
  • 46 CSP Dom. 1673, pp. 194, 287, 480.
  • 47 Bodl. Carte 77, f. 638.
  • 48 HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 99; HL/PO/CO/1/3, 28 Feb. 1678.
  • 49 Kenyon, Popish Plot, 69, 82, 93-95, 113, 132, 139-42; CSP Dom. 1678, pp. 551, 586, 587.
  • 50 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 300-1.
  • 51 Bodl. ms Eng. hist. c. 46, ff. 40-41, 44-45; CSP Dom. 1685, p. 163.
  • 52 CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 330, 345; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 383.
  • 53 Ailesbury Mems. 126, 148, 157-8.
  • 54 TNA, PC 2/72, pp. 756-7.
  • 55 HMC Hastings, ii. 202; Kingdom without a King, 159.
  • 56 Reresby Mems. 561-2; Chatsworth, Devonshire House Notebook, section B, f. 2r (sub. ‘Bellasis’).
  • 57 Verney ms mic. M636/43, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 12 Sept. 1689.