Ormonde, JAMES BUTLER, DUKE OF, was the first of the ancient Anglo-Irish family of Butler on whom the ducal title was conferred. The family was of illustrious antiquity. In the beginning of the 13th century Theobald Butler, from whom the Duke of Ormonde was descended, held the hereditary office of royal cupbearer or butler of Ireland. The subject of the present article was born in London in 1610. His father, the son of the celebrated Walter, Earl of Ormonde, was drowned in crossing the Channel; and the old earl having incurred the displeasure of the king, James I., and being thrown into prison, James, who on his father's death became, as Viscount Thurles, the heir of the title, was taken possession of as a royal ward, and placed under the guardianship of the Archbishop of Canterbury. On the restoration of his grandfather to liberty, he also was released; and in his twentieth year he married his cousin, Lady Elizabeth Preston, and in 1632 succeeded, upon his grandfather's death, to the earldom and estates of Ormonde. During the Strafford administration in Ireland Ormonde distinguished himself so much that on Strafford's recall he recommended him to the king; and in the rebellion of 1640 Ormonde was appointed to the chief command of the army. During the troubled times which followed he conducted himself with undoubted ability, although, as a necessary consequence of the numberless divisions and subdivisions of party which then prevailed in Ireland, he failed to satisfy any one of the conflicting sections; and when, in 1643, he concluded an armistice, his policy was loudly condemned as well by the friends as by the enemies of the royalist party in England. During the long contest of Charles with the Parliament, Ormonde continued to uphold the royal interest in his Irish government; and when the last crisis of the king's fortunes came, he resigned his Irish command, and retired to France, from which country he again returned to Ireland with the all but desperate design of restoring the royal authority. After a gallant but unequal struggle, he was, however, compelled, in 1650, to return to France. His services to the royal cause continued unremitting during his exile; and at the Restoration he accompanied Charles II. on his return, and was rewarded for his fidelity by the ducal title of Ormonde. His after-life was less eventful, although he twice again returned to the government of Ireland. It was in 1679 that the well-known attempt was made by the notorious Colonel Blood (q.v.) upon the life of Ormonde. As he was returning from a civic festival, he was attacked by Blood and a party of ruffians, and was dragged from his coach with the intention of his being hanged at Tyburn. The attempt drew additional interest from its being commonly supposed to have been instigated by the profligate Duke of Buckingham, Ormonde's inveterate foe. He escaped uninjured, and lived until the year 1688. As a soldier he exhibited both skill and bravery in command; and as a politician he was singularly upright in a period when there were many opportunities for the trimmer and the charlatan. His letters and other papers are full of deep historical interest. See Carte's Life of Ormonde (1735-36).
JAMES BUTLER, second Duke of Ormonde, was the grandson of the foregoing. He was born in Dublin in 1665, and when ten years of age was sent to France for his education, whence he returned after a few years, and was entered at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1682 he married Anne, daughter of Lord Hyde, afterwards Earl of Rochester. As Earl of Ossory he served in the army against Monmouth, and also held an office in the palace under James II. After his accession to the dukedom by the death of his grandfather in 1688, he took his share in the Revolution conflict, at first being for moderate measures; but he must have seen the futility of these, for afterwards, at the coronation of William and Mary, he acted as lord high-constable. He was present at the battle of the Boyne, at the head of William's life-guards. He soon became popular. In 1702 he was placed in command in the expedition against Cadiz; in 1703 he was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and in 1711 commander-in-chief of the land forces sent against France and Spain. After the accession of George I. Ormonde somehow fell into disgrace with the king, and was impeached in 1715 of high-treason, with the result that his estates were attainted, and he was deprived of all his honours. He retired into France, where he attached himself to the Jacobite court, and spent many years in the secret intrigues of the Pretender and his followers. He died abroad in 1746. A collection of letters written by him in the organisation of the abortive attempt by Spain to invade England and Scotland in 1719, and which led to the affair of Glenshiel (q.v.), were in 1890 brought to light, in the following years prepared for publication, and in 1896 issued by the Scottish History Society.