May I present Mr Lodge, Deputy Keeper of the Records in Bermingham Tower, Dublin Castle. As he will be your companion for a few days you may call him John.
He was born in Lancashire in 1692 and admitted sub-sizar to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1716, graduating with a BA in 1719. I found sub-sizar tricky too; it describes an undergraduate at Cambridge who did not have to pay tuition fees, instead helping in the kitchen or doing household chores in their college.
He led a peripatetic life: ordained as a deacon in Lincoln, a priest in Ely, teaching at a school in March in Cambridgeshire, moving to Dublin and dying in Bath in 1774 – a ripe old age in those days. He is best known as an archivist and genealogical historian; his most celebrated work being The Peerage of Ireland, published in 1754, in four volumes. In spite of Bellew being near the beginning of the alphabet he saved his magisterial entry for the family until the 4th volume. I imagine that higher ranks of the Irish nobility were covered first and Barons left to the end.
His Bellew entry is more detailed than anything recorded in even the 19th century and, in case you are interested in that sort of thing, I will share it with you in the coming days. Almost everything is new to me. On the other hand you may be bored by somebody else’s family history. Here is a flavour to get us started.
”The ancient Family of Bellew, frequently written Bedlow, derives its Origin from Normandy, as is evident from the Roll of Battle-Abby, one of the Name accompanying William the Conqueror in his Expedition to England, and had no inferior a Post in his victorious Army, than that of Marshal; and it is presumed, that at, or soon after the Arrival of the English in this Kingdom, they were transplanted here, where they have flourished, and enjoyed large Possessions to this present Time.”
I have copied John Lodge’s text faithfully, only changing f to s to make it easier to read. Transplanted and flourished makes the Bellews sound like begonias. How the family came by its large possessions in 1754 we will discover over the next few days.
