
Richard Butler, 3rd Viscount Mountgarret (1578-1651) was Viscount Mountgarret from 1602 to 1651, succeeding Edmund Butler and preceding Edmund Butler.
Biography[]
Richard Butler was born in 1578, the son of Edmund Butler, 2nd Viscount Mountgarret and the cousin of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde. He married the eldest daughter of the "Great Earl" Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, the most powerful Roman Catholic noble in Ireland at the time of the Tudor conquest of Ireland, and he distinguished himself in the defense of Ballyragget and Cullihill. He still inherited his father's estates in 1605, and he sat in the parliaments of 1613, 1615, and 1634. While his cousin Ormonde regarded him as being loyal to the Royalists at the start of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and appointed him joint Governor of Kilkenny, Mountgarret feared that the rights and the liberties of his Catholic brethren would still be further interfered with, causing him to betray Kilkenny to the Irish Confederates. Within a week, he also occupied Waterford, Tipperary, and their outlying fortresses, and he was chosen general of the Irish Catholic Confederation. He was defeated by Ormonde at the Battle of Kilrush on 10 April 1642, but he went on to become president of the Supreme Council in Kilkenny the next summer. In 1643, he fought at the Battle of New Ross, and he participated in the capture of Ballinakill on 5 May. He was outlawed by Oliver Cromwell amid the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, and he died in 1651. His son Edmund Butler, 4th Viscount Mountgarret had the family estates restored in 1662.