RICHARD BELING,
A man endowed with both learning and courage, and celebrated for his vindication of the catholics of Ireland, from the aspersions cast upon them by the historians of the great rebellion, was descended from an old English family long settled in Ireland; and was born at Belingstown, in the barony of Balrothe, in the county of Dublin, in 1613. He was the son of Sir Henry Beling, Knight, and received the early part of his education at a grammar-school in the city of Dublin, but afterwards was put under the tuition of some priests of the popish persuasion, who sedulously cultivated his natural talents, and taught him to write Latin in a fluent and elegant style. Thus grounded in the polite parts of literature, his father transplanted him to Lincoln's inn, where he pursued his studies for several years, and returned home a "very accomplished gentleman" but it does not appear that he ever made the law a profession. His natural inclination being warlike, he early engaged in the rebellion of 1641; and, although he had not attained his twenty-ninth year, was then an officer of considerable rank, as, in the February of the same year, he appeared at the head of a strong body of the Irish before Lismore, and summoned the castle to surrender; but the Lord Broghill, who commanded it, having a body of a hundred new raised forces, and another, party coming to his relief, Beling thought it prudent to retire, and quitted the siege.
He afterwards became a leading member in the supreme council of the confederated Roman catholics at Kilkenny; to which he was principal secretary, and was sent embassador to the pope and other Italian princes, in 1645, to beg assistance for the support of their cause. He, unluckily, brought back with him a fatal present in the person of the nuncio, John Baptist Rinencini, Archbishop and Prince of Fermo, who was the occasion of reviving
