Sir Henry Belasyse (1648 – 14 December 1717), also spelt Bellasis, was an English military officer from County Durham, who also sat as MP for a number of constituencies between 1695 and 1715.
Beginning his military career in 1674 under William of Orange, he proved an effective soldier who was trusted with a variety of senior commands, but was unpopular with his contemporaries. In the Glorious Revolution of November 1688, he helped secure the north of England for William, before fighting in Ireland and Flanders in the 1688 to 1697 Nine Years War.
During the War of the Spanish Succession in 1702, he was held responsible for the looting that followed the Battle of Cádiz, an event seen as having badly damaged the House of Habsburg cause. As a result, he was dismissed from the army in 1703; he never held active command again, although he was appointed Governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed from 1713 to 1715.
First returned to Parliament for Morpeth in 1693, he began his political life as a Whig, but was elected for Durham in 1701 with Tory support. He was MP for Durham from 1701 to 1708, and from 1710 to 1712, then for Mitchell, in Cornwall from 1713 to 1715; he did not stand in the 1715 election. He died in London on 14 December 1717 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Personal details
Henry Belasyse was born in 1648, at Biddick House in County Durham, son of Sir Richard Belasyse (1612–1651) of Potto, North Yorkshire, and his second wife, Margaret (d. after 1670). He had an elder half brother William, who died in 1681 and a sister, Catherine.
The Belasyse were a prolific family, long-established in Durham and Yorkshire; his paternal grandfather, Sir William, was High Sheriff of Durham from 1625 to 1640. Unlike many of his relatives, his father favoured Parliament in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and emerged with his estates largely intact. The majority backed Charles I of England, including Viscount Fauconberg (1577–1653) and Lord John Belasyse (1614–1689). His maternal grandfather, Sir William Lambton, was also a Royalist, killed at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644.
In 1680, Belasyse married Dorothy Benson (1636–1696), a widow and mother of the politician Robert Benson, Baron Bingley; they had three children, Mary, Thomas and Elizabeth, all of whom predeceased their father. In 1707, he married Fleetwood Shuttleworth (1676–1732); they had two children, Margaret, who died young and William (1697–1769).
Military career
Belasyse graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1667, before a period spent at legal school in the Middle Temple, then considered part of a gentleman's education. In 1674, he raised a company of men for the Scots Brigade, a mercenary unit in the Dutch States Army, whose origins went back to the 1580s, which normally contained three Scots and three English regiments. The latter were withdrawn in 1672 when England allied with France in the 1672–1678 Franco-Dutch War but restored after the 1674 Treaty of Westminster ended their involvement. Henry's company was recruited for one of the restored English regiments, which eventually became the 6th Foot.
He fought at Cassel in 1677 and shortly afterwards replaced Thomas Ashley as Colonel of the regiment. Wounded at Saint-Denis in 1678, the final battle in the Franco-Dutch War, he was knighted at some point between 1678 and 1681. He accompanied the Brigade when William of Orange sent it to England in 1685 to help James II suppress the Monmouth Rebellion, although it returned in August without seeing action. In early 1688, James demanded the repatriation of the entire Brigade; William refused to comply but used the opportunity to remove officers of doubtful loyalty.
For reasons that are unclear, Belasyse fell out of favour with William; he returned to England in April 1688 and his unit taken over by Philip Babington. He returned to Yorkshire, where he became a close associate of Lord Danby, a moderate Tory and one of the signatories of the 1688 Invitation to William, asking him to assume the English throne. After William landed at Torbay on 5 November 1688, Belasyse was part of a force under Danby that secured first York, the most important city in Northern England, then Hull, its largest port.