BELLOTT, George (c.1626-60), of Uttoxeter, Staffs.

Bellott’s family had been settled at Moreton in Cheshire since the mid-fifteenth century, while his kinsman Thomas Bellot† had represented Poole, Dorset, in the 1601 Parliament.19Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. 44; HP Commons 1558-1603; J. Sutton, ‘Cromwell’s commrs. for preserving the peace of the Commonwealth’, in Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution ed. I. Gentles, J. Morrill, B. Worden (Cambridge, 1998), 163. His father, John Bellott, married a Staffordshire gentlewoman and seems to have made her family’s property at The Ashes, Leek, his principal residence – at least, during the 1630s.20BRL, Ms 917/1588, 1611. In 1639, he was appointed sheriff of Staffordshire and, as such, was closely involved in the county’s elections for the Short and Long Parliaments.21Coventry Docquets, 369.

Bellott’s father sided with the king during the civil war – as did four of Bellott’s brothers – and was obliged to compound for his delinquency in 1646.22CJ iv. 705a; Sutton, ‘Cromwell’s commrs.’, 170. George Bellott was probably too young to play any meaningful role in the war, but his later career strongly suggests that his sympathies lay with Parliament. Moreover, in 1647, he married a sister-in-law of the wife of the leading Staffordshire parliamentarian Michael Noble*.23Vis. Staffs. ed. Grazebrook, 97. From April 1649, Bellott was named to successive Staffordshire assessment commissions; he was added to the county bench early in 1650 (attending a total of three quarter sessions meetings under the Rump and seven under the protectorate); he was active on the county committee under the Rump; and by 1651, he had been commissioned as a captain in the Staffordshire militia.24C193/13/3; SP28/242, f. 379; Staffs. RO, Q/SO 5, pp. 332, 480; Q/SO 6, ff. 6v, 78; D793/84; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 412.

What precisely recommended Bellott to the council of officers when it was selecting the membership of the Nominated Parliament in the summer of 1653 is a mystery. That he was a man of godly convictions is strongly suggested by several of his later appointments. But overall there seems little to distinguish him from any number of Staffordshire parliamentarians. Bellott’s relative obscurity and youth notwithstanding, it was undoubtedly him and not – as J. C. Wedgwood maintained – his uncle and namesake who was selected.25Wedgwood, Staffs. Parlty. Hist. ii. 93-4. In the event, he received only one appointment in this Parliament – to a committee set up on 20 July 1653 for prisons and prisoners.26CJ vii. 287b. Granted leave of absence on 16 September, he made no further impact upon the House’s proceedings.27CJ vii. 319b.

Although Bellott was flagged by an anonymous pamphleteer in 1654 as no friend to a state-supported national church, his appointment that year as an ejector for Staffordshire strongly suggests that he favoured a publicly-maintained and parish-based ministry.28Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 195-6, 414; A. and O. ii. 974. In June 1655, the protectoral council ordered Bellott, Robert Beake*, Francis Hacker*, William Purefoy I* and other militia commissioners to round up and imprison suspected royalist conspirators in the north midlands.29SP46/97, f. 152. And later that year, Bellott was appointed a Staffordshire commissioner to assist Major-general Charles Worsley* in governing the region.30TSP iv. 648. It may be significant that Bellott was among the Staffordshire justices of the peace who attended the January 1656 quarter sessions meeting at which Worsley presided.31Staffs. RO, Q/SO 6, f. 38. His service under the protectorate notwithstanding, Bellott evidently enjoyed the trust of the restored Rump, for in August 1659 the council of state ordered him and Thomas Crompton* to raise troops for securing Staffordshire during Sir George Boothe’s* rising.32Bodl. Rawl. C.179, p. 304.

Bellott was omitted from all offices at the Restoration and died in the autumn of 1660. He was buried at St Mary’s, Uttoxeter on 11 October 1660.33St Mary, Uttoxeter par. reg. He died intestate, and the administration of his estate was granted to his widow Anne on 19 December.34Staffs. RO, B/C/11, admon. of George Bellott, 1660. He was described in the grant of administration as of Newhouse, in the parish of Stone, but although Bellott’s elder brother had owned property at Stone, there is nothing to link Bellott himself with the parish.35Coventry Docquets, 602. Bellott’s nephew, Sir Thomas Bellot†, sat for Newcastle-under-Lyme on five occasions between 1679 and 1699.36HP Commons 1660-90.