In the last post John Bellew died in 1679. His widow, Mary nee Dillon, built a fine chapel in the woods above Barmeath where members of our family are still commemorated and interred. He had two sons and a daughter: Patrick, Christopher and Mary. We need only concern ourselves with the eldest son.
When James II lost his throne to William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 it was less than glorious for Ireland. The staunchly Catholic Bellews again supported their Catholic monarch when he fled to Ireland to raise an army against William. Patrick’s cousin, John Bellew, formed the Bellew regiment and was granted a Barony by King James. Patrick got a Baronetcy. James minted coins to pay his soldiers but, as things turned out, his army only lasted for a year. The first defeat was at the Boyne and the coup de grâce came at Aughrim in July 1691. There was still a bag of James’s coins at Barmeath when I was a child. John, the first Lord Bellew was shot by a bullet in the belly at the Battle of Aughrim putting paid to stories that the cowardly Jacobites ran away. It is true that they were woefully ill-equipped but more than 7,000 Jacobites lost their lives at Aughrim.
John Bellew’s wound did not kill him immediately. He went to London where he died in 1692 and was interred at St Margaret’s Westminster. The following year his widow brought his body back to be buried in Duleek in Co Meath, where you can see his tomb today. John’s sons, Walter and Richard succeeded to the title as did Richard’s son John but when he died in 1770 the title became extinct.
Patrick’s line were more fortunate. His Baronetcy was handed down through the generations and Bellews continued to live at Barmeath. Sir Edward Bellew, 6th Bt, died in 1827. Still staunchly Catholic, he had eight siblings, six of them male. Of this band of brothers at least three served in the Austrian Service. A bit Barry Lyndon? Edward’s son, Patrick, succeeded to the Baronetcy and we will take up his story another day.
I appreciate these intriguing vignettes can not attempt to subsume each facet of a tangled Irish history, but I note the author has omitted reference to 1798?
It is unfortunate the sixth Bt died just two years prior to emancipation, though, he is probably spinning in his grave at the idea of his turncoat successors selling out to the Brits for power.
No musical footnote today? I thought the author would have given us a rendition of Sir Patrick Bellew’s March as a prelude to episode iii of this most beguiling familia historia.
Does that make us cousins??