BELASYSE, Thomas (1663-1718)

Thomas Belasyse, 3rd Viscount Fauconberg, was the eldest son of Sir Rowland Belasyse, KB, younger brother of the childless Thomas Belasyse, earl of Fauconberg. Like much of his family – except for his elder brother Fauconberg – Sir Rowland was a Catholic and brought up his son to be one as well. H. Aveling, Northern Catholics, 333-4. The earldom of Fauconberg was extinguished at the earl’s death in 1700, but the viscountcy was an older title and was able to descend to the earl’s nephew. The 3rd Viscount never sat in the House of Lords, disabled by his Catholicism, and at the time of the Hanoverian succession was closely monitored as a known Jacobite. TNA, SP 35/6/30. His only known involvement with the House was as one of the signatories to a petition submitted in June 1716 against the bill for the registration of papists’ estates. HMC Lords, n.s. xii. 290. At his death, in exile in the English Benedictine convent in Brussels, in 1718, the viscountcy passed to his eldest son, Thomas Belasyse^†, 4th Viscount Fauconberg, who inherited his father’s estates in five northern counties and the copious debts run up by the extravagance of his mother. HMC Var. ii. 181-4. By 1737 the 4th Viscount was ready to take the requisite oaths so he could sit in the House, and was in 1756 was created earl of Fauconberg.