Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4

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Between these two great statesmen Theobald Walter, the eldest brother of
the archbishop, rose and flourished. Theobald is found in the _Liber Niger_
(c. 1166) as holding Amounderness by the service of one knight. In 1185 he
went over sea to Waterford with John the king's son, the freight of the
harness sent after him being charged in the Pipe Roll. Clad in that harness
he led the men of Cork when Dermot MacCarthy, prince of Desmond, was put to
the sword, John rewarding his services with lands in Limerick and with the
important fief of Arklow in the vale of Avoca, where he made his Irish seat
and founded an abbey. Returning to England he accompanied his uncle Randulf
to France, both witnessing a charter delivered by the king at Chinon when
near to death. Soon afterwards, Theobald Walter was given by John that
hereditary office of butler to the lord of Ireland, which makes a surname
for his descendants, styling himself _pincerna_ when he attests John's
charter to Dublin on the 15th of May 1192. J. Horace Round has pointed out
that he also took a fresh seal, the inscription of which calls him Theobald
Walter, Butler of Ireland, and henceforward he is sometimes surnamed Butler
(_le Botiller_). When John went abroad in 1192, Theobald was given the
charge of Lancaster castle, but in 1194 he was forced to surrender to his
brother Hubert, who summoned it in King Richard's name. Making his peace
through Hubert's influence, he was sheriff of Lancashire for King Richard,
who regranted to him all Amounderness. His fortunes turned with the king's
death. The new sovereign, treating his surrender of the castle as
treachery, took the shrievalty from him, disseised him of Amounderness and
sold his cantreds of Limerick land to William de Braose. But the great
archbishop soon found means to bring his brother back to favour, and on the
2nd of January 1201-2 Amounderness, by writ of the king, is to be restored
to Theobald Walter, _dilecto et fideli nostra_, Within a year or two
Theobald left England to end his days upon his Arklow fief, busying himself
with religious foundations at Wotheney in Limerick, at Arklow and at
Nenagh. At Wotheney he is said to have been buried shortly before the 12th
of February 1205-6, when an entry in the Close Roll is concerned with his
widow. This widow, Maude, daughter of Robert le Vavasor of Denton, was
given up to her father, who, buying the right of marrying her at a price of
1200 marks and two palfreys, gave her to Fulk fitz-Warine. Theobald, the
son and heir of Theobald and Maude, a child of six years old, was likewise
taken into the keeping of his grandfather Robert, but letters from the
king, dated the 2nd of March 1205-6, told Robert, "as he loved his body,"
to surrender the heir at once to Gilbert fitz-Reinfrid, the baron of
Kendal.

Adding to its possessions by marriages the house advanced itself among the
nobility of Ireland. On the 1st of September 1315, its chief, Edmund Walter
_alias_ Edmund the Butler, for services against the Scottish raiders and
Ulster rebels, had a charter of the castle and manors of Carrick,
Macgriffyn and Roscrea to hold to him and his heirs _sub nomine et honore
comitis de Karryk_. This charter, however, while apparently creating an
earldom, failed, as Mr Round has explained, to make his issue earls of
Carrick. But James, the son and heir of Edmund, having married in 1327
Eleanor de Bohun, daughter of Humfrey, [v.04 p.0880] earl of Hereford and
Essex, high constable of England, by a daughter of Edward I., was created
an Irish earl on the 2nd of November 1328, with the title of Ormonde.

From the early years of the 14th century the Ormonde earls, generation by
generation, were called to the chief government of Ireland as lords-keeper,
lords-lieutenant, deputies or lords-justices, and unlike their hereditary
enemies the Geraldines they kept a tradition of loyalty to the English
crown and to English custom. Their history is full of warring with the
native Irish, and as the sun stood still upon Gibeon, even so, we are told,
it rested over the red bog of Athy while James the White Earl was staying
the wild O'Mores. More than one of the earls of Ormonde had the name of a
scholar, while of the 6th earl, master of every European tongue and
ambassador to many courts, Edward IV. is said to have declared that were
good breeding and liberal qualities lost to the world they might be found
again in John, earl of Ormonde. The earls were often absent from Ireland on
errands of war or peace. James, the 5th earl, had the English earldom of
Wiltshire given him in 1449 for his Lancastrian zeal. He fought at St
Albans in 1455, casting his harness into a ditch as he fled the field, and
he led a wing at Wakefield. His stall plate as a knight of the Garter is
still in St George's chapel. Defeated with the earl of Pembroke at
Mortimer's Cross and taken prisoner after Towton, his fate is uncertain,
but rumour said that he was beheaded at Newcastle, and a letter addressed
to John Paston about May 1461 sends tidings that "the Erle of Wylchir is
hed is sette on London Brigge."

To his time belongs a document illustrating a curious tradition of the
Butlers. His petition to parliament when he was conveying Buckinghamshire
lands to the hospital of St Thomas of Acres in London, recites that he does
so "in worship of that glorious martyr St Thomas, sometime archbishop of
Canterbury, of whose blood the said earl of Wiltshire, his father and many
of his ancestors are lineally descended." But the pedigrees in which
genealogists have sought to make this descent definite will not bear
investigation. The Wiltshire earldom died with him and the Irish earldom
was for a time forfeited, his two brothers, John and Thomas, sharing his
attainder. John was restored in blood by Edward IV.; and Thomas, the 7th
earl, summoned to the English parliament in 1495 as Lord Rochford, a title
taken from a Bohun manor in Essex, saw the statute of attainder annulled by
Henry VII.'s first parliament. He died without male issue in 1515. Of his
two daughters and co-heirs Anne was married to Sir James St. Leger, and
Margaret to Sir William Boleyn of Blickling, by whom she was mother of Sir
James and Sir Thomas Boleyn. The latter, the father of Anne Boleyn, was
created earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde in 1529.

In Ireland the heir male of the Ormonde earls, Sir Piers Butler--"red
Piers"--assumed the earldom of Ormonde in 1515 and seized upon the Irish
estates. Being a good ally against the rebel Irish, the government
temporized with his claim. He was an Irishman born, allied to the wild
Irish chieftains by his mother, a daughter of the MacMorrogh Kavanagh; the
earldom had been long in the male line; all Irish sentiment was against the
feudal custom which would take it out of the family, and the two co-heirs
were widows of English knights. In 1522, styled "Sir Piers Butler
pretending himself to be earl of Ormonde," he was made chief governor of
Ireland as lord deputy, and on the 23rd of February 1527/8, following an
agreement with the co-heirs of the 7th earl, whereby the earldom of Ormonde
was declared to be at the king's disposal, he was created earl of Ossory.
But the Irish estates, declared forfeit to the crown in 1536 under the Act
of Absentees, were granted to him as "earl of Ossory and Ormonde." Although
the Boleyn earl of Ormonde and Wiltshire was still alive, there can be no
doubt that Piers Butler had a patent of the Ormonde earldom about the 22nd
of February 1537/8, from which date his successors must reckon their
peerage. His son and heir, James the Lame, who had been created Viscount
Thurles on the 2nd of January 1535/6, obtained an act of parliament in
1543/4 which, confirming the grant to his father of the earldom, gave him
the old "pre-eminence" of the ancient earldom of 1328.

Earl James was poisoned at a supper in Ely House in 1546, and Thomas the
Black Earl, his son and heir, was brought up at the English court,
professing the reformed religion. His sympathies were with the Irish,
although he stood staunchly for law and order, and for the great part of
his life he was wrestling with rebellion. His lands having been harried by
hit hereditary enemies the Desmond Geraldines, Elizabeth gave him his
revenge by appointing him in 1580 military governor of Munster, with a
commission to "banish and vanquish these cankered Desmonds," then in open
rebellion. In three months, by his own account, he had put to the sword 46
captains, 800 notorious traitors and 4000 others, and, after four years'
fighting, Gerald, earl of Desmond, a price on his head, was taken and
killed. Dying in 1614 without lawful issue, Thomas was succeeded by his
nephew Walter of Kilcash, who had fought beside him against the Burkes and
O'Mores. But Sir Robert Preston, afterwards created earl of Desmond,
claimed a great part of the Ormonde lands in right of his wife, the Black
Earl's daughter and heir. In spite of the loyal services of Earl Walter,
King James supported the claimant, and the earl, refusing to submit to a
royal award, was thrown into gaol, where he lay for eight years in great
poverty, his rents being cut off. Although liberated in 1625 he was not
acknowledged heir to his uncle's estates until 1630. His son, Viscount
Thurles, being drowned on a passage to England, a grandson succeeded him.

This grandson, James Butler, is perhaps the most famous of the long line of
Ormondes. By his marriage with his cousin Elizabeth Preston, the Ormonde
titles were once more united with all the Ormonde estates. A loyal soldier
and statesman, he commanded for the king in Ireland, where he was between
the two fires of Catholic rebels and Protestant parliamentarians. In
Ireland he stayed long enough to proclaim Charles II. in 1649, but defeated
at Rathmines, his garrisons broken by Cromwell, he quitted the country at
the end of 1650. At the Restoration he was appointed lord-lieutenant, his
estates having been restored to him with the addition of the county
palatine of Tipperary, taken by James I. from his grandfather. In 1632 he
had been created a marquess. The English earldom of Brecknock was added in
1660 and an Irish dukedom of Ormonde in the following year. In 1682 he had
a patent for an English dukedom with the same title. Buckingham's intrigues
deprived him for seven years of his lord-lieutenancy, and a desperate
attempt was made upon his life in 1670, when a company of ruffians dragged
him from his coach in St James's Street and sought to hurry him to the
gallows at Tyburn. His son's threat that, if harm befell his father he
would pistol Buckingham, even if he were behind the king's chair, may have
saved him from assassination. At the accession of James II. he was once
more taken from active employment, and "Barzillai, crowned with honour and
with years" died at his Dorsetshire house in 1688. He had seen his
great-great-uncle the Black Earl, who was born in 1532, and a
great-grandson was playing beside him a few hours before his death. His
brave son Ossory, "the eldest hope with every grace adorned," died eight
years before him, and he was succeeded by a grandson James, the second duke
of Ormonde, who, a recognized leader of the London Jacobites, was attainted
in 1715, his honours and estates being forfeited. The duke lived thirty
years in exile, chiefly at Avignon, and died in the rebellion year of 1745
without surviving issue. His younger brother Charles, whom King William had
created Lord Butler of Weston in the English peerage and earl of Arran in
the Irish, was allowed to purchase the Ormonde estates. On the earl's death
without issue in 1758 the estates were enjoyed by a sister, passing in
1760, by settlement of the earl of Arran, to John Butler of Kilcash,
descendant of a younger brother of the first duke. John dying six years
later was succeeded by Walter Butler, a first cousin, whose son John,
heir-male of the line of Ormonde, became earl of Ormonde and Ossory and
Viscount Thurles in 1791, the Irish parliament reversing the attainder of
1715. Walter, son and heir of the restored earl, was given an English
peerage as Lord Butler of Llanthony (1801) and an Irish marquessate of
Ormonde (1816), titles that died with him. This Lord Ormonde in 1810 [v.04
p.0881] sold to the crown for the great sum of L216,000 his ancestral right
to the prisage of wines in Ireland. For his brother and heir, created Lord
Ormonde of Llahthony at the coronation of George IV., the Irish marquessate
was revived in 1825 and descended in the direct line.

The earls of Carrick (Ireland 1748), Viscounts Ikerrin (Ireland 1629),
claim descent from a brother of the first Ormonde earl, while the viscounts
Mountgarret (Ireland 1550) spring from a younger son of Piers, the Red Earl
of Ossory. The barony of Caher (Ireland 1543), created for Sir Thomas
Butler of Chaier or Caher-down-Eske, a descendant in an illegitimate branch
of the Butlers, fell into abeyance among heirs general on the death of the
2nd baron in 1560. It was again created, after the surrender of their
rights by the heirs general, in 1583 for Sir Theobald Butler (d. 1596), and
became extinct in 1858 on the death of Richard Butler, 13th baron and 2nd
viscount Caher, and second earl of Glengall. Buttler von Clonebough,
_genannt_ Haimhausen, count of the Holy Roman Empire, descends from the 3rd
earl of Ormonde, the imperial title having been revived in 1681 in memory
of the services of a kinsman, Walter, Count Butler (d. 1634), the dragoon
officer who carried out the murder of Wallenstein.

See Lancashire Inquests, 1205-1307; Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society,
xlviii.; Chronicles of Matthew Paris, Roger of Hoveden, Giraldus
Cambrensis, &c.; _Dictionary of National Biography_; G.E.C.'s _Complete
Peerage_; Carte's Ormonde papers; Paston Letters; Rolls of parliament; fine
rolls, liberate rolls, pipe rolls, &c.

(O. BA.)

BUTLER, ALBAN (1710-1773), English Roman Catholic priest and hagiologist,
was born in Northampton on the 24th of October 1710. He was educated at the
English college, Douai, where on his ordination to the priesthood he held
successively the chairs of philosophy and divinity. He laboured for some
time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, held several positions as
tutor to young Roman Catholic noblemen, and was finally appointed president
of the English seminary at St Omer, where he remained till his death on the
15th of May 1773. Butler's great work, _The Lives of the Saints_, the
result of thirty years' study (4 vols., London, 1756-1759), has passed
through many editions and translations (best edition, including valuable
notes, Dublin, 12 vols. 1779-1780). It is a popular and compendious
reproduction of the _Acta Sanctorum_, exhibiting great industry and
research, and is in all respects the best work of its kind in English
literature.

See _An Account of the Life of A.B. by C.B._, _i.e._ by his nephew Charles
Butler (London, 1799); and Joseph Gillow's _Bibliographical Dictionary of
English Catholics_, vol. i.

BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1818-1893), American lawyer, soldier and
politician, was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, on the 5th of November
1818. He graduated at Waterville (now Colby) College in 1838, was admitted
to the Massachusetts bar in 1840, began practice at Lowell, Massachusetts,
and early attained distinction as a lawyer, particularly in criminal cases.
Entering politics as a Democrat, he first attracted general attention by
his violent campaign in Lowell in advocacy of the passage of a law
establishing a ten-hour day for labourers; he was a member of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and of the state senate in
1859, and was a delegate to the Democratic national conventions from 1848
to 1860. In that of 1860 at Charleston he advocated the nomination of
Jefferson Davis and opposed Stephen A. Douglas, and in the ensuing campaign
he supported Breckinridge.

After the Baltimore riot at the opening of the Civil War, Butler, as a
brigadier-general in the state militia, was sent by Governor John A.
Andrew, with a force of Massachusetts troops, to reopen communication
between the Union states and the Federal capital. By his energetic and
careful work Butler achieved his purpose without fighting, and he was soon
afterwards made major-general, U.S.V. Whilst in command at Fortress Monroe,
he declined to return to their owners fugitive slaves who had come within
his lines, on the ground that, as labourers for fortifications, &c., they
were contraband of war, thus originating the phrase "contraband" as applied
to the negroes. In the conduct of tactical operations Butler was almost
uniformly unsuccessful, and his first action at Big Bethel, Va., was a
humiliating defeat for the National arms. Later in 1861 he commanded an
expeditionary force, which, in conjunction with the navy, took Forts
Hatteras and Clark, N.C. In 1862 he commanded the force which occupied New
Orleans. In the administration of that city he showed great firmness and
severity. New Orleans was unusually healthy and orderly during the Butler
regime. Many of his acts, however, gave great offence, particularly the
seizure of $800,000 which had been deposited in the office of the Dutch
consul, and an order, issued after some provocation, on May 15th, that if
any woman should "insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the
United States, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated
as a woman of the town plying her avocation." This order provoked protests
both in the North and the South, and also abroad, particularly in England
and France, and it was doubtless the cause of his removal in December 1862.
On the 1st of June he had executed one W.B. Mumford, who had torn down a
United States flag placed by Farragut on the United States mint; and for
this execution he was denounced (Dec. 1862) by President Davis as "a felon
deserving capital punishment," who if captured should be reserved for
execution. In the campaign of 1864 he was placed at the head of the Army of
the James, which he commanded creditably in several battles. But his
mismanagement of the expedition against Fort Fisher, N.C., led to his
recall by General Grant in December.

He was a Republican representative in Congress from 1867 to 1879, except in
1875-1877. In Congress he was conspicuous as a Radical Republican in
Reconstruction legislation, and was one of the managers selected by the
House to conduct the impeachment, before the Senate, of President Johnson,
opening the case and taking the most prominent part in it on his side; he
exercised a marked influence over President Grant and was regarded as his
spokesman in the House, and he was one of the foremost advocates of the
payment in "greenbacks" of the government bonds. In 1871 he was a defeated
candidate for governor of Massachusetts, and also in 1879 when he ran on
the Democratic and Greenback tickets, but in 1882 he was elected by the
Democrats who got no other state offices. In 1883 he was defeated on
renomination. As presidential nominee of the Greenback and Anti-Monopolist
parties, he polled 175,370 votes in 1884, when he had bitterly opposed the
nomination by the Democratic party of Grover Cleveland, to defeat whom he
tried to "throw" his own votes in Massachusetts and New York to the
Republican candidate. His professional income as a lawyer was estimated at
$100,000 per annum shortly before his death at Washington, D.C., on the
11th of January 1893. He was an able but erratic administrator and soldier,
and a brilliant lawyer. As a politician he excited bitter opposition, and
was charged, apparently with justice, with corruption and venality in
conniving at and sharing the profits of illicit trade with the Confederates
carried on by his brother at New Orleans and by his brother-in-law in the
department of Virginia and North Carolina, while General Butler was in
command.

See James Parton, _Butler in New Orleans_ (New York, 1863), which, however,
deals inadequately with the charges brought against Butler; and _The
Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General B.F. Butler:
Butler's Book_ (New York, 1893), to be used with caution as regards facts.

BUTLER, CHARLES (1750-1832), British lawyer and miscellaneous writer, was
born in London on the 14th of August 1750. He was educated at Douai, and in
1775 entered at Lincoln's Inn. He had considerable practice as a
conveyancer, and after the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791
was called to the bar. In 1832 he took silk, and was made a bencher of
Lincoln's Inn. He died on the 2nd of June in the same year. His literary
activity was enormous, and the number of his published works comprises
about fifty volumes. The most important of them are the _Reminiscences_
(1821-1827); _Horae Biblicae_ (1797), which has passed through several
editions; _Horae Juridicae Subsecivae_ (1804); _Book of the Roman Catholic
Church_ (1825), which was directed against Southey and excited [v.04
p.0882] some controversy; lives of Erasmus, Grotius, Bossuet, Fenelon. He
also edited and completed the _Lives of the Saints_ of his uncle, Alban
Butler, Fearne's _Essay on Contingent Remainders_ and Hargrave's edition of
_Coke upon Littleton's Laws of England_ (1775).

A complete list of Butler's works is contained in Joseph Gillow's
_Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics_, vol. i. pp. 357-364.

BUTLER, GEORGE (1774-1853), English schoolmaster and divine, was born in
London and educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he
afterwards became fellow, in the capacity first of mathematical lecturer,
and afterwards of classical tutor. He was elected a public examiner of the
university in 1804, and in the following year was one of the select
preachers. As head master of Harrow (1805-1829) his all-round knowledge,
his tact and his skill as an athlete rendered his administration successful
and popular. On his retirement he settled down at Gayton, Northamptonshire,
a living which had been presented to him by his college in 1814. In 1836 he
became chancellor of the diocese of Peterborough, and in 1842 was appointed
dean of Peterborough. His few publications include some notes of Harrow,
entitled _Harrow, a Selection of Lists of the School between 1770 and 1828_
(Peterborough, 1849).

His eldest son, GEORGE BUTLER (1819-1890), was principal of Liverpool
College (1866-1882) and canon of Winchester. In 1852 he married Josephine
Elizabeth, daughter of John Grey of Dilston. She died on the 30th of
December 1906 (see her _Autobiography_, 1909). Mrs Josephine Butler, as she
was commonly called afterwards, was a woman of intense moral and spiritual
force, who devoted herself to rescue work, and specially to resisting the
"state regulation of vice" whether by the C.D. Acts in India or by any
system analogous to that of the continent in England.

His youngest son, the Rev. Dr HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER, became one of the
best-known scholars of his day. Born in 1833, and educated at Harrow and
Trinity, Cambridge, he was senior classic in 1855 and was elected a fellow
of his college. In 1859 he became head master of Harrow, as his father had
been, and only resigned on being made dean of Gloucester in 1885. In 1886
he was elected master of Trinity, Cambridge. His publications include
various volumes of sermons, but his reputation rests on his wide
scholarship, his remarkable gifts as a public speaker, and his great
practical influence both as a headmaster and at Cambridge. He married first
(1861), Georgina Elliot, and secondly (1888) Agneta Frances Ramsay (who in
1887 was senior classic at Cambridge), and had five sons and two daughters.

BUTLER, JOSEPH (1692-1752), English divine and philosopher, bishop of
Durham, was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, on the 18th of May 1692. His
father, a linen-draper of that town, was a Presbyterian, and it was his
wish that young Butler should be educated for the ministry in that church.
The boy was placed under the care of the Rev. Philip Barton, master of the
grammar school at Wantage, and remained there for some years. He was then
sent to Samuel Jones's dissenting academy at Gloucester, and afterwards at
Tewkesbury, where his most intimate friend was Thomas Seeker, who became
archbishop of Canterbury.

While at this academy Butler became dissatisfied with the principles of
Presbyterianism, and after much deliberation resolved to join the Church of
England. About the same time he began to study with care Samuel Clarke's
celebrated _Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God_, which had
been published as the Boyle Lectures a few years previously. With great
modesty and secrecy Butler, then in his twenty-second year, wrote to the
author propounding certain difficulties with regard to the proofs of the
unity and omnipresence of the Divine Being. Clarke answered his unknown
opponent with a gravity and care that showed his high opinion of the
metaphysical acuteness displayed in the objections, and published the
correspondence in later editions of the _Demonstration_. Butler
acknowledged that Clarke's reply satisfied him on one of the points, and he
subsequently gave his adhesion to the other. In one of his letters we
already find the germ of his famous dictum that "probability is the guide
of life."

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