Bellew, Sir John (d. 1693), 1st Baron Bellew of Duleek , Jacobite colonel, was son of Sir Christopher Bellew of Bellewstown and his wife Frances, daughter of Matthew Plunkett, Lord Louth. His father was made governor of Louth (30 October 1641) with the object of suppressing rebellion there, but was obliged to resign by sickness, and died soon after. Bellew was sent as a child to France for safety; he returned to Ireland (c.1648) with the marquess of Ormond (qv), who gave him command of a troop of horse, and later the position of lieutenant of the ordnance in Ireland. As a result his property was sequestrated by the Cromwellian regime, and he was compelled to transplant to Connacht. His petition for the restoration of his estates (a total of nearly 6,000 plantation acres in the counties of Louth and Meath) was approved in October 1660, and he was knighted 1661×1663.
Created baron (1686), he sat in the house of lords of the Irish Jacobite parliament of 1689, and was outlawed for high treason by the Williamites in April 1691. As colonel of a regiment of foot in the Jacobite army, he was, with his eldest son Walter, wounded and captured at Aughrim (12 July 1691). Both later died in England as a result of their wounds, John on 12 January 1693 – eighteen months after the battle. His son Richard managed to get the outlawry reversed and his own claims under the treaty of Limerick recognised. John Bellew – of whom a portrait by Garrett Morphy (qv) survives – married (c.1663) Mary, daughter of Walter Bermingham of Dunfirth, Co. Kildare, and granddaughter of Thomas FitzMaurice (qv), baron of Kerry.