BELLINGHAM, Sir Henry (c.1594-1650), of Helsington and Over Levens, Heversham, Westmld.

Bellingham was descended from a cadet branch of a Northumbrian family that had settled in Westmorland during the reign of Edward II.20Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 57, 126, 204; Diary of Thomas Bellingham ed. A. Hewitson (Preston, 1908), pp. v-vi. The first of his line to represent the county at Westminster since the fifteenth century, he began his parliamentary career in tentative fashion, receiving only one committee appointment in the Parliaments of 1625 and 1626, before giving way to the son of his fellow knight of the shire Sir John Lowther in 1628.21HP Commons 1604-29. He seems to have remained entirely conformable to the crown during the personal rule of Charles I and was sufficiently trusted by early 1639 to secure appointment as an oyer and terminer commissioner for the Northern circuit.22C181/5, f. 128. In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Bellingham and Sir Philip Musgrave were returned for Westmorland after seeing off a challenge from Lowther – apparently without the contest going to a poll. The senior place went to Musgrave.23Supra, ‘Westmorland’. Bellingham was elected on his own interest as one of the county’s wealthiest gentlemen. He received no appointments in the Short Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate.

Musgrave and Bellingham were returned for Westmorland again in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, and the experience finally seems to have awakened the latter’s interest in the Commons’ proceedings.24Supra, ‘Westmorland’. Between December 1640 and January 1642, he was named to 15 committees and contributed at least once to debate.25CJ ii. 45b, 59b, 61b, 69b, 73b, 75a, 114a, 129b, 130b, 152a, 172b, 197b, 210b, 219b, 390b; Procs. LP v. 114. Several of his appointments related to reforming the perceived abuses of the personal rule, including Ship Money and the court’s right to purveyance.26CJ ii. 45b, 75a, 114a, 197b. It is perhaps significant that he received no committee appointments relating to godly reform or the dismantling of Laudian church authority. All the signs are that he was not a man of puritan inclination, but at the same time there is no firm evidence that his royalist allegiance after 1642 sprang from any deep commitment to retaining episcopacy and the liturgy of the Church of England. His main concern at Westminster seems to have been the relief of the northern counties, where the quartering of the English and Scottish armies since the second bishops’ war of 1640 had been causing considerable hardship. On 18 January 1641, he was added to the committee for the king’s army, and on 4 March he joined a group of MPs, many of them northerners, in pledging money as security on a City loan for paying off the Scots. Bellingham offered to stand bond for £500.27CJ ii. 69b; Procs. LP ii. 628. This proposal to use City money to pay the Scots has been represented as an attempt by a proto-royalist element in the Commons to relieve the pressure on Charles from the ‘factious party’ by securing the withdrawal of the Scottish army.28R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution (2003), 334. Bellingham’s support for this cause probably explains his appointment on 30 April to a committee for drawing up instructions to the subsidy commissioners to levy the tax at a higher rate than previously.29CJ ii. 130b. He was named on 20 May to a committee of both Houses for a conference concerning the disbanding of the armies and to a committee set up on 10 June to consider the swiftest way to accomplish this task.30CJ ii. 152a, 172b.

Bellingham was granted leave of absence on 2 August 1641 and was probably in the north when on 30 August he was named as a parliamentary commissioner for disarming recusants in Westmorland – an appointment which suggests that he was seen as a firm Protestant.31CJ ii. 233a; LJ iv. 385b. There is no evidence that he returned to Parliament before 24 January 1642, when he received what proved to be his last committee appointment.32CJ ii. 390b. It is not clear at what point he subsequently withdrew from the Commons, although it was reported that he and Sir Patricius Curwen* left London for the north in July 1642.33Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/3: Taylor to Musgrave n.d. but July 1642. In about December 1642, Musgrave wrote to Bellingham mentioning a recent meeting between them at Appleby in which Bellingham had apparently contested the validity of the commission of array. Musgrave was further dismayed to find that whereas Bellingham had at one point declared that if it came to war his sword ‘should be drawn for the king’, he now seemed to be ‘an approver of such proceedings ... which, if one may judge your opinion of much lesser things a year ago, you would have abhorred the thought of them’.34Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/4/4. Certainly Bellingham’s appointment by the Commons on 27 December 1642 as a collector of the money raised in Westmorland on the propositions for maintaining the parliamentarian army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, suggests that he had not forfeited the trust of Parliament at this stage.35CJ ii. 903b. However, if he did retain any allegiance for Parliament he seems to have concealed it during the consolidation of royalist authority in the region over the winter of 1642-3. Indeed, in contrast to his eldest son, James Bellingham*, who was one of the region’s few gentry parliamentarians, Sir Henry threw in his lot with the king’s party at some point during 1643 and became what has been described as a ‘reluctant field officer’ under the royalist commander in the north, the earl of Newcastle.36P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers in England and Wales (New York, 1981), 23. After the war, the radical Cumberland pamphleteer John Musgrave claimed that whereas Bellingham had only declared for the king once his hand had been forced (which was probably early in 1643), having done so, he was firm to the royalists’ cause.

In the beginning of these troubles [Bellingham] left the Parliament, yet professed to his country [i.e. county] for a time he would not join with the enemy, but [he then] traitorously and deceitfully (when his country expected he would have stood up with them for the Parliament) deserted them and joined with the enemy, to the loss of that country. Was after a colonel for the king [and] very active against the Parliament.37J. Musgrave, A Fourth Word to the Wise (1647), 18 (E.391.9).

The issue that may have cemented Bellingham’s allegiance to the king was Parliament’s alliance with the Scots in the autumn of 1643 and the prospect of an imminent Covenanter invasion of the north. This may help to explain Bellingham’s attendance at the Oxford Parliament in January 1644 (which was called in part to address the problem of Scottish intervention), although he arrived too late to sign its letter to Essex, urging him to compose a peace. Had he signed this letter he might well have been disabled by the Commons. As it was, his case was respited on 5 February 1644 and – although it was known in London that he was consorting with Sir Philip Musgrave and other royalist commanders in Westmorland by July 1644 at the latest – he was not finally disabled for his delinquency until 11 October 1645 (a month after he had submitted to Parliament).38CJ iii. 390a; iv. 304a; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 178; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 255; Mercurius Britannicus no. 42 (1-8 July 1644), 328-9 (E.54.6).

For a ‘reluctant’ royalist officer, Bellingham showed considerable martial spirit in attempting to resist the invasion of Westmorland and Cumberland by the Scots in September 1644. He, Sir Philip Musgrave and several other royalist commanders mobilised their regiments against the Covenanters and were apparently ready to give them battle, only to have their inexperienced soldiers panic and take flight.39Tullie, Siege of Carlisle ed. Jefferson, 3-5. There is no evidence, however, that Bellingham subsequently took refuge in Carlisle along with Musgrave and other hard-line royalists; yet nor was he among the group of moderate royalist gentry who submitted to Parliament following the Scottish invasion of the region that autumn, despite his nomination to the Westmorland parliamentary assessment commission in October.40HMC Portland, i. 186; A. and O. i. 543. He did not take the Covenant until 12 September 1645, and it was not until July 1646 that he petitioned to compound. His fine was set in February 1647 at a third of his estate, which was calculated to be £3,228.41SP23/197, pp. 423, 440; CCC 1136.

During the second civil war, Bellingham and his son James threw in their lot with Sir Philip Musgrave and the Scottish Engagers under James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton. In a subsequent attempt to justify his actions to the Committee for Compounding*, Bellingham claimed that he had joined with the Engagers only under duress and to protect his estate from plunder.42SP23/197, p. 438. But according to a letter written in May 1648 by Musgrave’s colleague, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, Bellingham was ‘very active in raising his regiment’ for the king.43NAS, GD 406/1/2328. Moreover, Sir Edward Hyde* (using information probably supplied to him by Musgrave) stated that after the defeat at Preston, Bellingham marched his troops into County Durham to join with Langdale’s force and that they pressed the Scottish commander Major-general Sir George Monro to join with them against the parliamentarians.44Clarendon, Hist. iv. 379. Musgrave also sent Bellingham and Sir Robert Stryckland* to the Engager peer William Hamilton*, 1st earl of Lanark (later 2nd duke of Hamilton), offering to march their troops into Scotland to his assistance.45Clarendon, Hist. iv. 380; Perfect Weekly Acct. no. 26 (13-20 Sept. 1648), sig. Cc4v (E.464.21); Moderate Intelligencer no. 183 (14-21 Sept. 1648), 1551 (E.464.25). On this evidence, Bellingham was a willing partisan in the cavaliers’ cause. He remained in arms against Parliament until 9 October 1648, when he was among a large number of Musgrave’s officers who surrendered at Appleby Castle (contradicting a report that Bellingham and his son had taken ship for the Isle of Man late in September).46Alnwick, X.II.3, box 7, j: W. Penington to Hugh Potter*, 6 Oct. 1648; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 275. He petitioned to compound again in November 1648 and was fined at a sixth, or £1,971.47SP23/197, p. 438.

Bellingham died at some point between 15 and 26 October 1650, a few days before his only son and heir James Bellingham.48PROB11/216, f. 197; SP23/253, f. 100; CCC 1137. His place and date of burial are not known. The only sizeable bequest in his will was a legacy of £2,000 to his daughter for her marriage portion.49PROB11/216, f. 197. His great-nephew Alan Bellingham† represented Westmorland in the Exclusion Parliaments.50HP Commons 1660-90.