Origins
Theobald Walter, elder brother of Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1193-1205, was the ancestor of the Butler family in Ireland. His father, Hervey Walter, was a knight from Amounderness in Lancashire. The name Butler, soon to replace the family name, was derived from the honorific title of Butler of the household of John, Lord of Ireland and youngest son of Henry II. Theobald later assumed the hereditary title of Butler of Ireland, by virtue of which the family enjoyed the prise of wines entering Irish ports for several centuries. The reason for Theobald’s rise to power in Ireland must be linked to the influence of a maternal aunt, wife of Ranulph de Glanville, justiciar of England from 1180 to 1189. It was this vital connection with the court of Henry II that opened up opportunities of advancement to the sons of a relatively obscure knight. Both Hubert and Theobald appear to have grown up in Ranulph’s household. When Theobald set out for Ireland in 1185 as a member of John’s household, he was accompanied by his uncle. Ranulph wasted no time in exploiting this position, with the result that shortly after the expedition landed at Waterford, he and Theobald jointly received a grant from John of extensive territory in the kingdom of Limerick (Thomond or North Munster). Theobald subsequently fell from favor when John became king in 1199. Two years later the kingdom of Limerick was granted to William de Braose, but Theobald’s title to his lordship was secured by the timely intervention of Hubert, who headed the list of witnesses in a charter confirming his possessions, the de Braose grant notwithstanding.
The Butler Lordship
John’s grant of five and a half "cantreds" (baronies) in the kingdom of Limerick for the service of twenty-two knights was speculative. The territory lay well beyond the limits of Anglo-Norman settlement in 1185. Apart from a desire to reward his followers for their military services, John seems to have intended the conquest of Munster, doubtless as a means of extending his lordship of Ireland and securing his demesnes in Munster. The grants to Theobald, William de Burgh, and Philip of Worcester included the modern county of Tipperary and some adjacent territories in County Limerick, County Clare, and County Offaly. Little is known of the progress of the conquest before Theobald died circa 1206, except that it was fiercely contended by Domnall Ua Briain, King of Limerick. However, it is possible to reconstruct both the outline and the organization of the lordship on the basis of later manorial surveys, which bear the imprint of an original plan that can confidently be attributed to Theobald on the basis of a grant of "the tuath of Kenelfenelgille" (the manor of Drum) to one of his vassals in the cantred of Eliogarty, probably between 1190 and 1200. This important deed reveals that before he died, the future shape of the settlement was already discernible. At the center of the cantred lay Theobald’s chief manor (caput) of Thurles, from which radiated the fiefs of military tenants owing feudal services to their lord. This distinctively uniform scheme of settlement was repeated in all of the territories granted to Theobald. He organized his lordship in the kingdom of Limerick around four manorial centers or capita: Nenagh and Thurles (County Tipperary), Caherconlish (County Limerick), and Dunkerrin (County Offaly), forming a contiguous group of lordships. Theobald was also granted important fiefs in the lordship of Leinster by John during the minority of Isabelle, daughter and heiress of Strongbow. These he organized into lordships focused on three great manorial centers: Gowran (County Kilkenny), Tullow (County Carlow), and Arklow (County Wicklow). These enormous grants amounted to about 750,000 statute acres, placing Theobald, if not in quite the same category as de Courcy, de Lacy, or Strongbow, then certainly among the major tenants-in-chief of the crown, thereby laying the foundation of the future greatness of the family.
In the two centuries that followed, the heirs of Theobald acquired and lost other territories in Ireland, particularly in Ui Maine in Connacht, but many of them had no enduring value. In fact, the Butlers suffered major losses of territory at the hands of the O’Kennedys (Ui Chenneidig), O’Carrolls (Ui Cherbaill), and others in the course of the first half of the fourteenth century, particularly in northern County Tipperary and adjacent lands in County Offaly and northern County Kilkenny. As a consequence of these losses, much of the original heartland of the lordship was lost: Nenagh, the chief seat of the family, was reduced to a frontier outpost by the end of the fourteenth century. However, the absenteeism of the neighbouring Anglo-Irish lords, especially in the neighbouring county of Kilkenny, permitted the Butlers to compensate for their losses elsewhere. The purchase of Kilkenny Castle from the Despensers in 1391, replacing Nenagh as their chief seat, was only the final piece of a series of acquisitions in the county over the course the preceding century. Besides, the grant of the liberty of Tipperary to James Butler, first Earl of Ormond, in 1329, had the effect of extending the family’s jurisdiction over the entire county, or at least what remained of it after the losses sustained in the north in the course of the same century. This shift in the territorial center of gravity was further reinforced in the course of the fifteenth century, when the demesnes of the earls of Ormond became concentrated in County Kilkenny, leaving County Tipperary largely in the hands of cadet branches.
The Earldom of Ormond
Although the Butlers were clearly important tenants-in-chief in the thirteenth century, they did not play a prominent political role. While Irish magnates did feature in the royal administration from time to time, the governorship was frequently controlled either by churchmen or by royal servants dispatched from England. However, as the political situation in the Irish colony deteriorated in the fourteenth century, the crown increasingly relied on the cheaper option of appointing Irish magnates to look after the troubled affairs of Ireland. Besides, the great lordships of Ulster, Mide (Meath), and Leinster were more often than not in the control of absentee lords, leaving the way open for those who remained, most notably the FitzGeralds and the Butlers. The first member of the Butler family to play a significant role was Edmund, who was lord deputy of Ireland 1304-1305 and 1312-1314, and chief governor (justiciar) 1315-1316, during the Bruce crisis. He was granted the earldom of Carrick in 1315, and was occasionally styled earl, but he was never created earl probably because he was unable to visit England before he died in 1321.While the grant of the liberty, which made him palatine lord of Tipperary, was in some respects a de facto recognition that the county was increasingly a liability to the royal administration rather than a source of profit, it must also be seen as an honorific underpinning of the new title. The jurisdictional powers conveyed with the liberty were precisely the same as those exercised in the previous century by the lords of Ulster, Meath, and Leinster. It was in effect an official recognition that the Butlers had now achieved the rank formerly accorded only to the greatest Anglo-Irish magnates. Not least among the ironies of the new title was the fact that, during the lifetime of the first earl, Butler control of the cantred of Ormond began to disintegrate.
The third earl was justiciar of Ireland in 1384, and then deputy. He was subsequently justiciar in 1393, preparing the way for Richard II’s first expedition to Ireland, and finally justiciar and later deputy in 1404-1405. As a fluent Irish speaker and influential magnate, he negotiated important submissions on behalf of the king. His son, the "White Earl," was undoubtedly the most influential Irish magnate in the first half of the fifteenth century. He was eight times chief governor of Ireland: lieutenant 1420-1422, 1425-1426, and 1442-1444; justiciar 1426-1427; and deputy 1407-1408, 1424, 1441-1442, and 1450-1452. Like his son, the fifth earl, he saw military service in continental Europe on several occasions, and was a frequent visitor to England. Within the Butler lordship he exercised firm control over the rivalries of the cadet branches, at the same time successfully managing the Irish septs on the frontiers.
Rivalry with the Fitzgeralds
Once the absentee lords were no longer serious rivals for power, it was in the nature of things that the remaining Anglo-Irish magnates would engage in the struggle for supremacy. In the fourteenth century a bitter feud arose between the Butlers and the FitzGerald earls of Desmond. During the minority of the second earl of Ormond, the earl of Desmond ravaged Ormond and Eliogarty in 1345, which seems to have instigated a devastating revolt by the O’Kennedys of Ormond and other Irish septs in the Butler lordship. The cause of these disputes is hard to determine, but they were probably provoked by territorial rivalries. On one memorable occasion in the chapel of Dublin castle in 1380 in the presence of Edmund, Earl of March, the celebrant, the bishop of Cloyne, began the preface in the mass with the words: "Eternal God, there are two in Munster that destroy both us and our property, to wit the earls of Ormond and Desmond, together with their bands of followers, whom in the end may the Lord destroy, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Such rivalries were further complicated by political alignment occasioned by the Wars of the Roses, which placed both the Desmond and Kildare FitzGeralds in the opposing Yorkist camp.
Relations with the Native Irish
The Ormond deeds contain a number of fourteenth-century treaties between the earls and their Irish subjects, including three with the O’Kennedys of Ormond: 1336, 1356, and 1358. While the treaties reflect the changing balance of power between overlord and subject in the context of a Gaelic revival, they reveal some elements that were characteristic of the relationship reaching back to the invasion. Those elements included a system of judicial arbitration based on the compensatory provisions of Brehon law; an annual rent, sometimes expressed in monetary terms, but which almost certainly took the form of an ancient cattle rent reaching back into pre-Norman arrangements, and continuing into the sixteenth century; attendance at the earl’s court in Nenagh; and military service in the form of cavalry and foot soldiers. It is unlikely that this arrangement survived in its judicial aspects into the fifteenth century. However, it is clear that even after the wars of the Gaelic recovery in the previous century, the Irish septs on the periphery of the lordship as often as not formed alliances with the Butlers, probably to secure protection from their rivals, or a consequence of internal power struggles. In this way, the third and fourth earls in particular anticipated the kind of Gaelic alliances that one associates with Gerald, the Great Earl of Kildare, in the later fifteenth century.
Cadet Branches
The emergence of powerful cadet branches was a notable feature of the later medieval period. The most important of these groups were the Butlers of Cahir, who traced their lineage from a liaison between the third earl and Catherine of Desmond. Their bitter rivals, the Butlers of Polestown (County Kilkenny), also traced their ancestry to the third earl, regarding themselves as next in line to the succession. Such rivalries were aggravated through family ties with the FitzGeralds, involving the Cahir Butlers with Desmond, and the Polestown Butlers with Kildare. The Butlers of Dunboyne, whose Tipperary base was the manor of Kiltinan, also became entangled in these rivalries. Repeated and only partially successful efforts were made by the earls in the course of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries to contain such rivalries by a series of ordinances issued in assemblies composed of the inhabitants of the lordship.
