Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond

Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond, P.C. (1426 – 3 August, 1515) was the youngest son of James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond. He was attainted, but restored by Henry VII' s first Parliament in November 1485, and the statutes made at Westminster, by Edward IV, which declared him and his brothers traitors, were abrogated.

Family

Arms of Butler, Earl of Ormond: Gules, three covered cups or^[1]

Bench end in Monkleigh Church, Devon (parish church of Annery) showing the Ormonde knot and arms of Butler: Gules, three covered cups or,^[2] both displayed on escutcheons within Gothic cusped lancet arches

Thomas Butler was the third son of James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond, by his first wife, Joan de Beauchamp (d. 3 or 5 August 1430). He had two elder brothers, James Butler, 5th Earl of Ormond, and John Butler, 6th Earl of Ormond, as well as two sisters, Elizabeth Butler, who married John Talbot, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury, and Anne Butler (d. 4 January 1435), who was contracted to marry Thomas FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Desmond, although the marriage appears not to have taken place. ^[3]

Career

Thomas Butler, as an Irish peer, should only have sat in the Irish Parliament. However, as a personal friend of Henry VII he was summoned to the English Parliament in November 1488 as "Thomas Ormond de Rochford chevaler". At this time he was already 8th Earl of Carrick and 7th Earl of Ormond,^[4] having succeeded his elder brothers James Butler, 5th Earl of Ormond and John Butler, 6th Earl of Ormond, neither of whom left legitimate issue.

He was afterwards sworn of the Privy Council of England.

He was known as The Wool Earl, due to his enormous wealth. Besides being in the possession of major lands in the Irish counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary, he owned 72 manors in England, making him one of the richest subjects in the realm.^[5]

In 1509, he was appointed Lord Chamberlain to Catherine of Aragon.^[6] He held this post until 1512.

Marriage and progeny

He married twice:

• Firstly in 1445 to Anne Hankford (1431–1485), daughter and co-heiress of Sir Richard Hankford (c. 1397 – 1431) of Annery, Monkleigh, Devon, jure uxoris feudal baron of Bampton^[7] (grandson of Sir William Hankford (c. 1350 – 1423), Chief Justice of the King's Bench) by his 2nd wife Anne Montagu (d.1457), a daughter of John Montacute, 3rd Earl of Salisbury (c. 1350 – 1400).^[8] By Anne Hankford he had two daughters and co-heiresses who inherited the Butler estates in England:
  • Lady Anne Butler (1455-June 5, 1533), heiress through her mother of Annery,^[9] who married firstly Ambrose Cressacre, esquire, by whom she had no issue, and secondly Sir James St Leger (d.1509), by whom she had two sons, Sir George St Leger, and James St Leger.^[10]
  • Lady Margaret Butler (1465–1537), who married Sir William Boleyn, by whom she had six sons and five daughters, including Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, father of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII.^[11]
• Secondly in 1486 , he married Lora Berkeley (1454–1501), widow successively of John Blount, 3rd Baron Mountjoy (by whom she had two sons and two daughters^{[12][13][14][15]}), and Sir Thomas Montgomery (d. 2 January 1495) of Faulkbourne, Essex, and daughter of Edward Berkeley (d. March 1506) of Beverston Castle, Gloucestershire, by his wife Christian Holt (d.1468), second daughter and coheir of Richard Holt. By his second wife Lora Berkeley, Ormond had one daughter:
  • Elizabeth Butler^[16] (d.1510).

Death & succession

Ormond died on 3 August 1515 and was buried in the Mercers' Chapel of the Hospital of St Thomas of Acre in the City of London.^[17] As he died without male progeny the barony supposedly created in 1488 fell into abeyance. The Earldom devolved to his heir male and distant cousin Piers Butler, 8th Earl of Ormond, 1st Earl of Ossory (1467-1539), the grandson of his first cousin Sir Edmund MacRichard Butler (1420-1464) of Polestown, County Kilkenny, Ireland, a grandson of James Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormond (c.1359-1405) of Gowran Castle in Ireland.

See also

Butler dynasty

Notes

References

• Burke, Bernard (1936). A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire (New ed.). London: Harrison. p. 55. Retrieved 13 December 2013. 
• Cokayne, George Edward (1936). The Complete Peerage, edited by H.A. Doubleday and Lord Howard de Walden. IX. London: St. Catherine Press. pp. 337–8. 
• Horrox, Rosemary (2004). "Blount, Walter, first Baron Mountjoy (d. 1474)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2700.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Nichols, Francis Morgan (1891). The Hall of Lawford Hall. London: Ellis and Elvery. pp. 192–3, 314. Retrieved 13 December 2013. 
• Richardson, Douglas (2011). Everingham, Kimball G., ed. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families. I (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City. ISBN 1449966373. 

1. Marie Louise Bruce, Anne Boleyn, p. 11
2. Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII, pp. 59, 117