John Bellew was the quintessential old Englishmen of stock settled in Ireland since the late twelfth century. Staunchly Roman Catholic he was educated to the law at Gray’s Inn in London and on his return to Ireland in 1630 entered on his inheritance of 700 acres at Lisrenny near Ardee. By 1641 he had a prosperous law practice and an estate of 1460 acres. He was Justice of the Peace, Sheriff of the County and elected to Parliament in 1640, he played a part in Strafford’s impeachment. The insurrection of 1641 brought his advancement to an end. Suspected of collaboration with the insurrectionists he was expelled from parliament and outlawed. He later served as Lieutenant-General of Artillery in the Leinster Army of the Catholic Confederacy until, with others of his kind, he transferred to the royalist cause in 1648. His surrender in 1653 under the Articles of Kilkenny brought an end to his military career. Despite the provisions of the Articles his estates in Louth were confiscated and he was transplanted to an estate of 793 acres in County Galway. For the rest of his life he struggled to secure that neither himself nor his family would perish from the ranks of the gentry class. Using his skills as a lawyer and a network of friends and acquaintances he had built up throughout his career, (as agent for his cousin, the powerful courtier Theobald Taaffe, earl of Carlingford); he successfully steered the latter through the legal administrative and political minefields of the Restoration Land Settlement to win him substantial recoveries of lands in Sligo, Louth and Wexford. He was rewarded in turn with an estate in his native Louth, his coast of Israel from whence he had been driven by the English Commonwealth. Retaining his new found lands in Galway, he proved himself to be a great survivor.
