Ormonde
Ormonde names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Ormonde JAMES BUTLER, DUKE OF
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JAMES BUTLER, DUKE OF, an English statesman; born in London, England, Oct. 19, 1610. He was the first of the ancient Anglo-Irish family of Butler on whom the ducal title was conferred. 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 duke's 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 On the restoration of his grandfather to liberty, he also was released; and in his 20th 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 distinguish ed himself. He failed to please in 1643 when he concluded an armistice; his policy was 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 design of restoring the royal authority. After a gallant but unequal struggle, he was, however, compelled, in 1650, to return to France. 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, though he twice again returned to the government of Ireland. It was in 1679 as he was returning from a civic festival, he was attacked by Colonel Blood and a party of ruffians, and dragged from his coach with the intention of being hanged at Tyburn. He escaped uninjured, and lived till the year 1688. He died in Dorsetshire, England, July 21, 1688.
Ormonde JAMES BUTLER, 2D DUKE OF
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JAMES BUTLER, 2D DUKE OF, an English military officer; born in Dublin in 1665. In 1682 he married Anne, daughter of Lord Hyde, afterward 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, but afterward, 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, and with the result that his estates were attainted, and he was deprived of all his honors. 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. A collection of letters written by him in the organization of the abortive attempt by Spain to invade England and Scotland in 1719, were in 1890 brought to light, and in 1896 issued by the Scottish History society. He died abroad in 1745. Transition English
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The bare facts Collier's set down in 1921 still hold: both dukes' careers, the 1670 Blood attempt on the first duke in Pall Mall, and the second duke's 1715 attainder and Jacobite exile are as reported. What has moved is the Butler family itself and the scholarship around it. The vast Ormonde manuscript collection, calendared for the Historical Manuscripts Commission in the decades either side of 1921, made the first duke one of the best-documented figures of the Irish Confederate wars, and modern historians treat his 1643 armistice with the Confederates less as a failure of nerve than as the only workable royalist policy in a country at war with itself. The family's ancient seat at Kilkenny Castle passed out of Butler hands in 1967, sold to a restoration committee for a nominal 50 pounds and now a state-run public monument, and the marquessate of Ormonde became extinct in 1997 on the death of the seventh marquess.
Written for this edition, 2026.