Ormond

Ormond (Butler), a premier Anglo‐Norman family deriving its name from the office of an ancestor, Theobald Walter, butler in the household of Prince John, whom he accompanied to Ireland in 1185. The title ‘earl of Ormond’, though not bestowed till 1329, referred to the cantred of Ormond, where the castle of Nenagh, the principal seat of the family before 1391, was situated. The prominent historical role of the Butlers was due in part to their capacity to produce an unbroken succession of male heirs down to 1515, and subsequently to 1715, long after other leading families had run out in daughters or come to political grief. In this way they preserved intact the lordship granted to them in 1185 and augmented by Theobald's successors, including the palatinate of Tipperary. This power base secured for their members a significant role in the history of Ireland and England.

The Walter family owed its rise to court connections. Theobald's maternal uncle was Ranulph de Glanville, Henry II's great justiciar, while his brother Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, governed England during the long absences of King Richard I. Ranulph and Theobald received from John a grant of some 750,000 acres in north Munster, no doubt with the king's approval. The Butler lordship in Munster and Leinster, where Theobald also held important fiefs, was organized rapidly into seven seigniorial centres in Nenagh, Thurles, Dunkerrin, Caherconlish, Gowran, Tullow, and Arklow. Theobald shared his distinguished relatives' flair for administration.

Although the Butlers were from the beginning important tenants‐in‐chief, they remained in the political background in the 13th century. This situation changed dramatically in the next century when Scottish and French affairs, combined with declining revenues in the Irish administration, forced the crown to leave the government and defence of Ireland increasingly in the hands of the resident magnates. The absentee lords of Leinster, Meath, and Ulster, the great players in the previous century, left the political stage vacant by default, leaving the Butlers and Fitzgeralds (see desmond; kildare) to fill the vacuum. The Bruce invasion thrust Edmund Butler onto centre stage. His son James, the 1st earl of Ormond, was granted the liberty of Tipperary together with the earldom in 1328, perhaps to secure his acquiescence in the Mortimer regency. In spite of territorial losses to the renascent Irish septs in the mid‐century, the earls took advantage of the weakness of absentee lords to acquire their lands, so that by 1391, when the 3rd earl bought Kilkenny Castle, they dominated the Barrow‐Nore‐Suir basin.

The summit of their influence in the medieval period was attained by James, 3rd earl of Ormond (1385–1405), and his son James, the White Earl (1411–52). By means of marriages and frontier alliances with Irish and Gaelicized Anglo‐Norman septs their influence extended well beyond their lordship, anticipating the kind of suzerainty exercised by the earls of Kildare at the beginning of the 16th century. It was for this reason, as much as for his fluency in Irish, that Richard II selected the 3rd earl as his chief adviser and go‐between during his first Irish expedition (1394–5).

This period of dominance ended with the execution of James, 5th earl of Ormond and Wiltshire, following the defeat of the Lancastrians at Towton in 1461 (see wars of the roses). His absentee successors John and Thomas failed miserably to control the feuds of the cadet branches of the family that reduced the Butler lordship to chaos, and did little to check the power of Desmond and Kildare. When Thomas died in 1515, the title to the earldom was contested fiercely by Piers Butler and Thomas Boleyn, earl of Wiltshire and father of Henry VIII's second wife Anne. Piers's title was paper thin, but the king needed him as much as he needed the king. In the event he won recognition as earl of Ormond, and in the process recreated Butler domination of the Irish political stage, thanks to the political skills of his son James, the 9th earl, and grandson Thomas (‘the Black Earl’), who died in 1614. This remarkable renaissance coincided with the destruction of their medieval rivals, Desmond and Kildare, leaving the Butlers in unchallenged possession of the field.

It is sometimes suggested that the Butlers, unlike the Fitzgeralds, owed their survival to their association with English interests. But the politics of the royal court could bring destruction as quickly as fortune: only the most experienced players survived. The Butler lordship repeatedly faced extinction: the attainder of 1462, the Boleyn challenge in the reign of Henry VIII, the Preston challenge in the reign of James I, and the Cromwellian period. The reality is that they survived because at such critical moments the interests of the family lay in the capable hands of Piers Butler (1515–39), Walter Butler (1614–33), and the great James, 1st duke of Ormond (1633–88). Ormond's grandson the 2nd duke (1665–1745) seemed initially set to follow in his grandfather's footsteps, acting as a leader of the Tory interest in Great Britain and as its centre in Ireland. In 1715, however, faced with the threat of impeachment by the Whig government, he fled to France and embraced what proved to be the lost cause of Jacobitism. His brother Charles Butler, earl of Arran (1671–1758), was permitted to purchase the forfeited estate, which passed on his death to the Butlers of Kilcash. In 1791 John Butler (1740–95) secured recognition as 17th earl of Ormond, on the grounds that since the 2nd duke had never been attainted by the Irish parliament his Irish titles had not been forfeited. (The marquisate and dukedom had nevertheless become extinct on the death of Charles Butler in 1758). The marquisate was revived in 1816 and again, following another failure of male heirs, in 1825.

Revd Canon C. A. Empey