native city. In 1828 he was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, 16 Feb. 1828, and in 1831 entered upon the active service as a naval surgeon, in which he passed the greater part of his life. His first appointment was on the Harrier, where he joined in several boat attacks on the pirates infesting the straits of Malacca. In 1835 he joined the Leveret, and served in the prevention of the African slave trade until 1839. In this expedition he was one of the party that boarded the slave brig Diogenes, and had charge of the wounded prisoners until they were transferred to the hospital at Mozambique. He next served for three years with the Firefly on the West Indian coast. In 1843 he went with the Wolf to the coast of China. During his absence, and without his knowledge, he was elected F.R.C.S. causa honoris 6 Aug. 1844. In 1849 he had medical charge of the Havering, which conveyed 365 convicts to Sydney. Cholera broke out, but his firmness and judgment enabled him to dispense with the exercise of the great powers entrusted to him on this occasion. Some scientific maps and specimens sent by him to the admiralty from Labuan were forwarded to the Museum of Economic Geology. His last outward voyage was in November 1854, when he joined the flagship Britannia, which conveyed Vice-admiral Dundas to the Black Sea as commander of the fleet. Bellot was assigned the care of the sick at the naval hospital of Therapia on the Bosphorus, as one of the chief hospital surgeons, and returned to England in March 1855 in charge of invalids. This adventurous life was not without influence on his health, and during his stay in the West Indies he had two attacks of yellow fever. He returned to Manchester, and, dying in June 1857, was buried in the churchyard of Poynton, Cheshire. He was honorary member of the Philosophical Society of Sydney, and of several other learned associations. The classical learning received at the Manchester school was increased by further study in the scanty leisure of his busy professional life. He translated the Aphorisms of Hippocrates and of Galen on the Hand (1840). In the latter he was helped by Mr. Joseph Jordan. His interest in philology led him to make excursions into the domain of oriental literature. In the intervals on half-pay he visited many cities of Europe, attended the lectures of H. H. Wilson at Oxford, made the acquaintance of Bunsen, and was a friend and disciple of Bopp. Bellot's work on the 'Sanscrit Derivations of English Words,' printed at Manchester in 1856 by subscription, is in effect a comparative dictionary, in which a number of English words are traced to their source. The illustrations range over a wide field of philological knowledge, including Chinese.
He had paid considerable attention to the language and antiquities of China, and bequeathed his collection of Chinese books and bronzes to the Manchester Free Library. An article by him on the best means of learning the Chinese language will be found in 'Notes and Queries' (1st series, x. 168).
[Smith's Manchester Grammar School Register (Chetham Society), 1874, iii. 164; Axon's Handbook of the Public Libraries of Manchester, Manchester, 1877, p. 174; Catalogue of the Library of the Manchester Medical Society, 1866; information supplied by his brother, W. H. Bellot, M.D., Leamington.]
BELMEIS or BELESMAINS, JOHN, John of the Fair Hands (d. 1203 ?), bishop of Poitiers, and archbishop of Lyons, was a native of Canterbury, and was in his early years brought up in the household of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury. According to Bale, who has preserved or invented several early details, John was born of illustrious parents, but, finding the opportunity for study too scant in his native country, he travelled to Gaul and Italy in search of knowledge, where he profited so much that on his return he was held 'princeps literatorum.' John of Salisbury, who was with Belmeis in Apulia, probably about 1156, praises him above all the men he had ever met for his knowledge of the three tongues (i.e. Latin, Greek, and Hebrew) (Polycraticus, viii. c. 7, with which cf. vi. 24 Metalogicus ii. prologue, and Baronius, sub anno 1156). Bale adds that John was an intimate friend of Adrian IV; but, according to Pits, this intimacy with the only English pope occurred in Adrian's papacy, and after John had been made canon and treasurer of York. William of Canterbury tells us that John was originally one of a little band of three churchmen who influenced Theobald in his ecclesiastical appointments, mainly, it would seem, to their own advantage (cf. FitzStephen (R.S.), iii. 17). The other two members of this group were Thomas Becket and Roger, afterwards archbishop of York. We may place the date of this friendship in the last years of Stephen's reign, as it seems that of the three John became treasurer, and Roger archbishop of York in 1154, while Thomas was made archdeacon of Canterbury in 1153.
In 1157, when firm ground in Belmeis' biography is first reached, he was present when Henry II inquired into the claims of
