John Belasyse, 1st Baron Belasyse


John Belasyse, 1st Baron Belasyse was an English nobleman, Royalist officer and Member of Parliament, notable for his role during and after the Civil War. He suffered a long spell of imprisonment during the Popish Plot, although he was never brought to trial. From 1671 until his death he lived in Whitton, near Twickenham in Middlesex. Samuel Pepys was impressed by his collection of paintings, which has long since disappeared.

Origins

He was born at Newburgh Grange, Yorkshire and was baptised on 24 July 1614 at Coxwold, Yorkshire.
He was the second son of Thomas Belasyse, 1st Viscount Fauconberg, a Member of Parliament for Thirsk in the Short and Long Parliaments, by his wife Barbara Cholmondeley, a daughter of Sir Henry Cholmondeley of Roxby in Yorkshire.

Career

Civil War

Shortly after the start of the Civil War he was "disabled" from sitting in the Long Parliament as he had joined the Royalist cause. He raised six regiments of horse and foot soldiers at his own expense and took part in the Battle of Edgehill and the Battle of Brentford, both in 1642, the First Battle of Newbury, the Battle of Selby, the Battle of Naseby, as well as the sieges of Reading, Bristol and Newark and was wounded several times. He later became Lieutenant-General of the King's forces in the North of England, and Governor of York and of Newark. At Oxford on 27 January 1645 he was raised to the peerage by King Charles I under the title of Baron Belasyse of Worlaby, Lincolnshire.
On 4 February 1665 Samuel Pepys recorded an anecdote about Belasyse's civil war activities in a diary entry:

Interregnum

Belasyse is considered to have been one of the first members of the Sealed Knot, a Royalist underground organisation, as was Sir Richard Willis, his predecessor as Governor of Newark. During the Interregnum Belasyse was in frequent communication with King Charles II and his supporters in Holland.

Charles II

After the Restoration of the Monarchy Belasyse was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire and Governor of Kingston upon Hull, while from 1665 to 1666 he held the posts of Governor of Tangier and Captain-General of the forces in Africa. According to Samuel Pepys, he accepted the post only for the profit it brought. In 1666/7 Belasyse was in England; his appointment as Governor of Tangier was withdrawn and he was appointed Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms. In 1672 he resigned this appointment as he was unwilling to take the Oath of Conformity introduced under the Test Act.

Popish Plot

At the time of the plot of Titus Oates, Belasyse, along with four other Catholic peers, Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, William Herbert, 1st Marquis of Powis and William Petre, 4th Baron Petre, was denounced as a conspirator and formally impeached in Parliament. Belasyse was said to have been designated Commander-in-Chief of a supposed "Popish army" by the Jesuit Superior-General, Giovanni Paolo Oliva, but Charles II, according to Von Ranke, burst out laughing at the idea that this infirm old man, who could hardly stand on his feet due to gout, would be able even to hold a pistol. The informer William Bedloe who had once worked for Belasyse, now accused him of ordering the murder of the respected magistrate Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, which remains unsolved to this day. It was never made clear why Belasyse, or indeed any other Catholic, should wish to kill Godfrey, who was notably tolerant in religious matters. Belasyse in his defence referred to his age and ill-health, and reasonably pointed out that under the tolerant rule of Charles II he was living out his last years in comfort: what possible reason had he to wish for a change of regime? The Government, for example, was well aware that the Catholic mass was celebrated regularly at his London house, but made no effort to prevent it.
The most that could plausibly be said against him was that he was a friend of the senior civil servant Edward Colman, an ardent and politically active Catholic, who was executed for his supposed part in the Plot in December 1678, and that Colman had visited Belasyse the night before he gave himself up to the authorities. However Colman in fact seems to have been guilty of nothing more than indiscreet correspondence with the French Court in which he outlined his wildly impractical schemes for the advancement of the Catholic faith in England. There is no reason to think that Belasyse, even if he knew of this correspondence, shared Colman's opinions.
Despite his frequent references to his old age and infirmity, Lord Belasyse lived on for another ten years. The impeached Catholic peers, though they endured a long imprisonment in the Tower, where Lord Petre died in 1683, were never brought to trial, apart from Stafford, who was executed in December 1680.

James II

Following the accession of king James II, Belasyse returned to favour and in July 1686 was appointed a Privy Counsellor and in 1687 was appointed as First Lord Commissioner of the Treasury which, on account of his Catholicism, caused political problems for the king, although in a Court dominated by extremists, he was regarded as moderate. He and the king had always been on friendly terms: after the death of his first wife Anne Hyde, James had informally promised to marry Susan Belasyse, Belasyse's widowed daughter-in-law, "a lady of much life and vivacity", despite the fact that she was a staunch Protestant while he was a Catholic convert. The marriage was forbidden by Charles II, who told his younger brother that "it was too much that he had played the fool once and that it was not to be done a second time and at such an age." Susan was forced to surrender the written proofs of the engagement although she kept a secret copy.

Marriage and children

Belasyse married three times and by his first and third wives had at least sixteen children, many of whom died in infancy. His wives were as follows:
He had seven surviving daughters, by his first and third wives:
He died on 10 September 1689 and was buried on 14 September 1689 at the church of St Giles in the Fields, London. A monument erected in his memory in the old Church destroyed during the rebuilding of the present Georgian church, but the inscribed tablet survives now in the south porch, reading as follows: