James FitzThomas Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond (19 October 1610-21 July 1688) was an Anglo-Irish statesman and general who commanded Royalist forces in Ireland during the Irish Confederate Wars of the 1640s.
Biography[]
James FitzThomas Butler was born in Clerkenwell, London in 1610, the eldest son of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles, who was the eldest son and heir of Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond. His father was Protestant and his mother a Catholic, and he was raised in Ireland and England. He became Viscount Thurles in 1619 before becoming a ward of Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond in 1623, and he was brought up as a Protestant. Thurles went to live with his grandfather at Drury Lane at the age of 15, and he befriended George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, intending on joining his relief of La Rochelle before the project was abandoned on the Duke's assassination. Butler married his cousin Elizabeth Preston in 1629, fathering Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory, Richard Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, Elizabeth Butler Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield, John Butler, 1st Earl of Gowran, and Mary Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. In 1633, he was taken under the wing of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, who governed Ireland for King Charles I of England. He became Earl of Ormond that same year, and he became commander-in-chief of the forces in Ireland in 1640 while Wentworth fought in the Bishops' Wars against the Scots Covenanters.
On the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Butler was given command of the Irish Royal Army based in Dublin. He mounted several expeditions against the Irish Confederates, securing control of the Pale in 1642 and lifting the siege of Drogheda in March 1642. In April 1642, he defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Kilrush, and he was created Marquess of Ormond in August 1642. In 1643, he defeated the Confederates at the Battle of New Ross, and, in September 1643, he negotiated a year-long ceasefire with the Confederates to focus on battling the Parliamentarians back in England. In November 1643, he was named Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by King Charles. He continued to negotiate ceasefires with the Royalists, but these deals weakened his support among English and Scottish Protestants in Ireland. In 1644, he assisted Alasdair Mac Colla with his expedition to Scotland, sparking the Scottish Civil War in 1644-1645. In 1646, the Confederates called off their truce with Ormond under the influence of the papal nuncio Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, and he handed over Dublin to the Parliamentarians in June 1647 rather than lose it to the Catholics. In August 1647, the combined royalist and parliamentarian troops won the Battle of Dungan's Hill against the Confederates. In January 1649, he concluded a peace with the rebels on the basis of the free exercise of their religion, and he was made a Knight of the Garter by King Charles II of England. He was given command of the Confederate-Royalist armies in Ireland amid the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, and Oliver Cromwell defeated him at the Battle of Rathmines in August 1649 and took one Royalist stronghold after the other. In May 1650, most Protestant Royalist troops under his command went over to Cromwell, leaving him with only the Irish Catholic forces. He was ousted from his command in late 1650, and he went into exile in France. Cromwell confiscated Ormond's lands in 1652, leaving Ormond desperately short of money. In 1655, he and the royals were expelled from France, but he helped secure an alliance with Spain in April 1656.
On the Restoration of the House of Stuart in 1660, Ormond was made a commissioner for the treasury and the navy, Lord Steward of the Household, a Privy Councillor, Lord Lieutenant of Somerset, High Steward of Westminster, Kingston and Bristol, chancellor of Trinity College Dublin, Baron Butler of Llanthony, Earl of Brecknock, and Duke of Ormond. He also recovered his enormous estates in Ireland, and he once more served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1661 to 1669. In 1670, the ruffian Thomas Blood failed to assassinate Ormond. Ormond later opposed Richard Talbot's attempt to upset the Act of Settlement in 1671, and, in 1677, he was reappointed to the lord lieutenancy. He rendered the Catholics of Ireland powerless after the Popish Plot hysteria of 1678, but Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury attacked his mildness and moderation. In 1682, he was made an English duke, and he served as Chancellor of the University of Dublin from 1645 to 1688. He retired to Cornbury in Oxfordshire, and he died in Dorset in 1688.