BUTLER-ORMOND
1441–1442, and 1450–1452. Like his son, the fifth
earl, he saw military service in continental Europe
on several occasions, and was a frequent visitor to
England. Within the Butler lordship he exercised firm
control over the rivalries of the cadet branches, at the
same time successfully managing the Irish septs on
the frontiers.
Rivalry with the Fitzgeralds
Once the absentee lords were no longer serious rivals
for power, it was in the nature of things that the
remaining Anglo-Irish magnates would engage in the
struggle for supremacy. In the fourteenth century a
bitter feud arose between the Butlers and the
FitzGerald earls of Desmond. During the minority
of the second earl of Ormond, the earl of Desmond
ravaged Ormond and Eliogarty in 1345, which seems
to have instigated a devastating revolt by the
O’Kennedys of Ormond and other Irish septs in the
Butler lordship. The cause of these disputes is hard
to determine, but they were probably provoked by
territorial rivalries. On one memorable occasion in
the chapel of Dublin castle in 1380 in the presence
of Edmund, Earl of March, the celebrant, the bishop
of Cloyne, began the preface in the mass with the
words: “Eternal God, there are two in Munster that
destroy both us and our property, to wit the earls of
Ormond and Desmond, together with their bands of
followers, whom in the end may the Lord destroy,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Such rivalries were
further complicated by political alignment occa-
sioned by the Wars of the Roses, which placed both
the Desmond and Kildare FitzGeralds in the oppos-
ing Yorkist camp. The attainder and execution by the
Yorkists of James, fifth Earl of Ormond, in 1461, left
Ireland effectively in control of the FitzGerald earls
until the succession of Piers Butler to the earldom
in 1515.
Relations with the Native Irish
The Ormond deeds contain a number of fourteenth-
century treaties between the earls and their Irish sub-
jects, including three with the O’Kennedys of
Ormond: 1336, 1356, and 1358. While the treaties
reflect the changing balance of power between over-
lord and subject in the context of a Gaelic revival,
they reveal some elements that were characteristic of
the relationship reaching back to the invasion. Those
elements included a system of judicial arbitration
based on the compensatory provisions of Brehon law;
an annual rent, sometimes expressed in monetary
terms, but which almost certainly took the form of
an ancient cattle rent reaching back into pre-Norman
arrangements, and continuing into the sixteenth century;
attendance at the earl’s court in Nenagh; and military
service in the form of cavalry and foot soldiers. It is
unlikely that this arrangement survived in its judicial
aspects into the fifteenth century. However, it is clear
that even after the wars of the Gaelic recovery in the
previous century, the Irish septs on the periphery of
the lordship as often as not formed alliances with the
Butlers, probably to secure protection from their
rivals, or a consequence of internal power struggles.
In this way, the third and fourth earls in particular
anticipated the kind of Gaelic alliances that one asso-
ciates with Gerald, the Great Earl of Kildare, in the
later fifteenth century.Cadet Branches
The emergence of powerful cadet branches was a
notable feature of the later medieval period. The
most important of these groups were the Butlers of
Cahir, who traced their lineage from a liaison
between the third earl and Catherine of Desmond.
Their bitter rivals, the Butlers of Polestown (County
Kilkenny), also traced their ancestry to the third earl,
regarding themselves as next in line to the succes-
sion. Such rivalries were aggravated through family
ties with the FitzGeralds, involving the Cahir Butlers
with Desmond, and the Polestown Butlers with Kildare.
The Butlers of Dunboyne, whose Tipperary base was
the manor of Kiltinan, also became entangled in
these rivalries. Repeated and only partially success-
ful efforts were made by the earls in the course of
the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries
to contain such rivalries by a series of ordinances
issued in assemblies composed of the inhabitants of
the lordship.
ADRIAN EMPEYReferences and Further Reading
Carte, Thomas. An History of the Life of James, Duke of Ormond.
London: 1736.
Empey, C. A. “The Butler Lordship in Ireland, 1185–1515.”
Ph.D. diss., Trinity College Dublin, 1970.
———. “The Settlement of the Kingdom of Limerick.” In
England and Ireland in the later Middle Ages, edited by
James Lydon, 1–25. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981.
———. “The Norman Period, 1185–1500.” In Tipperary:
History and Society, edited by William Nolan and Thomas
G. McGrath, 71–91. Dublin: Geography Publications,
1985.