Richard Bellings

Richard Bellings was born at Bellinstown in County Dublin in 1613, the son of a sheriff and grandson of a royal lawyer, yet he remained barred from public office simply because he was Catholic. That exclusion helped push him into the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and later onto the Supreme Council of Confederate Ireland, where he tried to force discipline onto a chaotic war. He remembered the violence with disgust, especially the killing of Protestants, and he spent his later years writing a history that still shapes how people judge that doomed experiment in self-rule.