1225 auditor of the accounts of the justices to whom the collection of the quinzime was assigned, and himself assigned to collect it in Northamptonshire. This is probably the reason why Dugdale includes him among the barons. He is mentioned by Matthew Paris in 1236 as playing his part with due solemnity as royal butler on the occasion of the banquet in honour of the marriage of the king with Eleanor of Provence. Some few years previously, probably in 1230, he founded at Wroxton a priory for canons regular of the order of St. Augustine, endowing it with the manors of Wroxton and Balescote. The grant was confirmed by a charter of Henry III. The priory or abbey, as it came to be called, continued in existence till the dissolution of religious houses in Henry VIII's reign. The property afterwards came into the family of the earls of Downe. The present tenant, the Baroness North, is a descendant of the lord keeper Guilford, who married a sister of the last earl of Downe. A few fragments of the original building are preserved in the existing structure, which was erected between 1600 and 1618 by the earl of Downe of that day.
[Rot. Chart. 75, 134; Rot. Claus. i. 286; Testa de Nevill, 226a; Madox's Exch. i. 462, 474, ii.291; Rot. de Obi. et Fin. (Hardy), 180; Matthew Paris, ed. Luard, iii. 338; Manning and Bray's Surrey, i. 406; Tanner's Not. Monast, Oxfordshire; Skelton's Engraved Illustrations of Oxfordshire, Bloxham Hundred; Burke's Visitation of Seats and Arms, ii. 189.]
BELETH, JOHN (fl. 1182?), the author of the often-printed 'Rationale divinorum officiorum,' is somewhat hesitatingly claimed as an Englishman by Pits. According to Tanner, however, his cognomen was Anglicus. He is said by Henricus Gandavensis (d. 1293) to have been rector of a theological school at Paris. Albericus Trium Fontium (fl. 1241) describes him under the year 1182 as flourishing in the church of Amiens (Chron. Alberici apud Leibnitz, ii. 363). Possevinus, apparently quoting from Essengrenius, has assigned him a very different date — 1328 — which has been adopted by Pits, and, according to Oudin, by some later writers. The latest author quoted by Beleth seems to be Rupert Tuitiensis, who died in the year 1135 (see Rationale, c. 123). The chapter in the 'Rationale' on the feast of the Invention of St. Stephen, instituted in the fifteenth century (Migne), is evidently a late insertion. Besides the 'Rationale,' two other works have been attributed to Beleth — a collection of sermons, and a treatise entitled 'Gemma Animæ.' The 'Rationale' seems to have been printed several times during the course of the sixteenth century, and at various places. In later years it has been issued in Migne's 'Patrologiæ Cursus,' vol. ccii. Many manuscripts of this work used to exist in England. Pits mentions two in the private libraries of Baron de Lumley and Walter Cope. Tanner adds two others, to be found respectively in the Royal Library at Westminster (now in the British Museum), and in the Bodleian at Oxford.
[Pits, 869; Possevinus, Apparatus Sacer, i. 825; Fabricius, Biblioth. Lat. iv. 56; Oudin De Scriptor. Ecclesiast. ii. 1589; Du Boulay's Historia Univers. Parisians, ii. 749; Tanner, and authorities cited above; a list of the various editions of the Rationale is given by Fabricius.]
BELFAST, Earl of. [See Chichester, Frederick William.]
BELFORD, WILLIAM (1709–1780), artillery officer, was born in 1709, and entered the royal regiment of artillery on its formation as a cadet on 1 Feb. 1726. The regiment of artillery was not yet of much importance as a component part of the army, for Marlborough had always employed Danish, Dutch, and German adventurers as gunners, and had not laid much importance upon securing English artillerymen. King George I, Lord Stanhope, and Sir Robert Walpole all saw the importance of this branch of the service, and Albert Borgard [q.v.] was allowed to raise the royal regiment of artillery in 1726. Young Belford soon showed his aptitude for learning all that was then to be learned of the science of artillery, and was promoted fireworker in 1729, second lieutenant in 1737, first lieutenant in 1740, and captain-lieutenant or adjutant in 1741. In that year he served in the expedition to Carthagena, and gave such satisfaction that he was promoted captain in 1742. He then served in the campaigns in Flanders in 1742-45, and was present at the battle of Dettingen, and was promoted a major in the army by brevet in 1745. He next commanded the small force of artillery attached to the Duke of Cumberland's army at Culloden, and 'by his spirit and boldness checked the vigour of the clans, and gave the victory,' for which signal service he was promoted lieutenant-colonel in the army by brevet. He then commanded the artillery in Flanders in 1747-8 and at the battle of Fontenoy, and was promoted lieutenant-colonel in his regiment in 1749, and succeeded Albert Borgard, the founder of the regiment, as colonel commandant at Woolwich in 1751. He held this important post till he was promoted major-general in January 1758. He had then to surrender the command of the
