BELLINGS, RICHARD. - Irish statesman and historian, born in Dublin in an unknown year, died in 1677. A member of the Irish Parliament through his marriage to a daughter of Viscount Mountgarret, he became secretary of the “Supreme Council” in 1642. As a fervent Catholic, he was sent to Rome in 1644 to ask Innocent XII for a nuncio for Ireland (cf. Pastor, XIV, 1, pp. 120, 122), which was granted. With the advent of the Cromwellians his property was confiscated and he was forced to take refuge in France. Later he was able to return to his homeland and recover possession of his fortune.
His principal work is a defence of the Irish Catholics (Vindiciarum Catholicorum Hiberniac lib. II, Paris 1650). In 1772 his history of Ireland in the years 1641-48 was published for the first time; it was subsequently republished, with notes and documents from the original manuscript, by J. T. Gilbert, under the title History of the Irish Confederation and the War in Ireland, 1641-48 (4 vols., Dublin 1882-85).