Henry Bard, 1st Viscount Bellomont

Henry Bard, 1st Viscount Bellomont, (1616 – June 20, 1656), was an English Royalist.

The younger son of a clergyman of Staines in Middlesex, Bard was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. During the 1630s, he travelled extensively in Europe and the Middle East and later presented an ornate Koran to King's College, which he had allegedly stolen from a mosque in Egypt.

Bard returned to England on the outbreak of civil war. Having found favour with Queen Henrietta Maria, he was commissioned a colonel and knighted. He gained the confidence of Prince Rupert and remained a close friend of the Prince, but his most noted exploit was an impetuous charge at the battle of Cheriton in March 1644 when his entire regiment was either killed or taken prisoner. Bard himself suffered a wound that cost him the use of an arm. Nevertheless, he was created a baronet in October 1644 and gained a command in the Oxford army. Soon afterwards, he married Anne Gardiner, with whom he had a son and three daughters.

Appointed governor of a large area of Gloucestershire early in 1645, Bard became notorious for his harsh treatment of the local population. He played a prominent role in the storming of Leicester in May 1645, where his regiment was the first to scale the walls, and he commanded an infantry division at the fateful battle of Naseby the following month. After Naseby, Bard was appointed governor of Worcester. He was raised to the Irish peerage as Viscount Bellomont in July 1646. On a journey to Ireland in December 1646, his vessel was captured by a Parliamentarian warship and Bard was brought back a prisoner to England. He was released in 1647 on condition that he went into exile.

At Charles II's court-in-exile, Bard became a Roman Catholic convert. He was arrested at The Hague in May 1649 on suspicion of murdering the Commonwealth ambassador Isaac Dorislaus, but the charge was soon dropped. In 1653, Charles sent him as his envoy to the Shah of Persia in the hope of raising money claimed to be owed to England for naval aid during the 1620s and from compensation for the Shah's appropriation of East India Company customs levies. Bard travelled in disguise through Turkey and Armenia to arrive in Persia in September 1654. Although he was well-received by Shah Abbas II, Bard's negotiations were unsuccessful. On his own initiative, he went to India to seek aid from the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. He arrived at Surat in January 1656 but died the following June at Hodal, apparently of heat apoplexy.

References

* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02292c.htm Catholic Encyclopedia Article]
*CatholicThis article contains text under a Creative Commons License by David Plant, the British Civil Wars and Commonwealth website http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/index_b.htm