John Chippendall Montesquieu Bellew

John Chippendall Montesquieu Bellew (né Higgin; 3 August 1823 – 19 June 1874) was an English author, preacher, and public reader. Early life He was born at Lancaster on 3 August 1823, the only child of an infantry officer, Captain Robert Higgin, of the 12th Regiment, son of John Higgin of Lancester. His mother, Anne Maria Bellew, who was a Roman Catholic, who towards the close of 1822 had married Captain Higgin; she was the daughter of John Bellew, of Castle Bellew, County Galway, and cousin of Lord Bellew. She was co-heiress under the will of her uncle, Major-general Bellew, heir-at-law of the O'Briens, earls of Thomond. Educated during his earlier years at Lancaster Grammar School, Higgin in 1843 matriculated at St Mary Hall, Oxford. On attaining his majority in the autumn of 1844 he took his mother's maiden name Bellew, and dropped his patronymic Higgin. He was induced to do this by the circumstance of his being descended maternally from the senior branch of the O'Briens, and thus a descendant from Teige the second brother of Donough, the fourth earl, brother of Daniel O'Brien, 1st Viscount Clare. Soon after entering the university, he became known as a speaker at the Oxford Union. Cleric Bellew was ardained in 1848, was appointed a curate of St. Andrews in Worcester, and in 1850 transferred to a curacy at Prescot, Lancashire. In the following year he went to the East Indies. There, almost immediately upon his arrival in 1851 at Calcutta, he was nominated chaplain of St. John's Cathedral there. He held that position for four years, during part of which he also wrote for the Morning Post and edited the Bengal Hurkaru.