BORN 1610, DIED 1688.
By Sir Peter Lely.
THE biographer of the second Duke thus alludes to the antiquity of the family:—‘It is sufficient for the honour of the house of Ormonde that its original is too ancient to be traced, and that its first descents, even after it became considerable for its possession, power, and alliances, cannot be ascertained.’
According to the above-quoted author, the immediate ancestor of the family, Theobald Walter, accompanied King Henry II. to Ireland about the year 1171, when Roderick, King of Connaught, and many other petty Princes, yielded up their sovereignty to the English monarch. Theobald Walter did Henry good service in the new country, and received as a reward such extensive grants of lands, as determined him to take up his residence in Ireland; and from that time forth the fortunes of the family have been bound up with those of the sister island. The post of Chief Butler (hereditary) was also assigned him, with a further grant of what was called ‘the prisage of wine,’ which entitled Theobald and his descendants to one tun of wine out of nine brought by any ship into Irish ports. In 1315 Edmund le Botillier (it is an open question if the name were derived from the office) was created Earl of Carrick, as a recompense for his loyal services to Edward II. He was Guardian and Governor of the kingdom of Ireland; and henceforth his descendants in the succeeding reigns were almost invariably connected with the government of that country, whether as Lords-Deputy, Lords-Justices, or Lords-Lieutenant.
Lord Carrick’s son married the King’s cousin, and was in 1322 created Earl of Ormonde. He had also the rights of a Palatine in the county of Tipperary conferred on him,—rights which were taken away and restored again and again in the troubled times of that ever troubled country. Few families in any part of the world have been more remarkable for the vicissitudes of fortune than the Butlers. The seventh Earl of Ormonde died without sons, and left his two daughters very large fortunes; the youngest married Sir William Boleyn, and was grandmother to Queen Anne of that name.
Sir Piers Butler, a distant relative, became heir to the Irish estates, but King Henry VIII., at the instigation of his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Boleyn, prevailed upon him (chiefly, it is said, by conferring on him the title of Ossory) to relinquish the earldom of Ormonde in favour of the said Sir Thomas, on whose death, however, a few years afterwards, the rightful Earl of Ormonde resumed his title. We are induced to give these details in consequence of the strange coincidences which befell the heads of this family in different reigns.
Thomas, the tenth Earl, a man of undaunted courage, who began his military career at an early age, was a great favourite with Queen Elizabeth, and for a time with King James I. ‘His courage in the field and his spirit in private occurrences were remarkable. He always held the Earl of Leicester at defiance, and did not scruple to charge him to the Queen as a knave and coward.’ There is an amusing anecdote told of the two noblemen meeting one day at Court, in the antechamber. After the usual exchange of civilities, says Lord Leicester, ‘My Lord Ormonde, I dreamed of you last night.’ ‘What could you dream of me?’ inquired the other. ‘That I gave you a box on the ear,’ was the rejoinder. ‘Oh,’ exclaimed Lord Ormonde; ‘do you not know that dreams are always interpreted by contraries?’ and with that he bestowed a hearty cuff on the Royal favourite. This one-sided satisfaction entailed on Ormonde a visit to the Tower; but he was soon released. The Queen had a great fancy for him, in spite of Lord Leicester’s enmity, and used to call him her ‘black husband.’ His dark complexion had gained for him in Ireland the nickname of ‘Dhuiv,’ or ‘the Black.’ He was three times married: first to Elizabeth, daughter and heiress to Thomas, Lord Berkeley; secondly to Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Sheffield; and thirdly to Ellen, daughter of Lord Barry and widow of Lord Poer, whom he married when he was old and blind. He had children by his second wife only,—a son, who died in boyhood, and a daughter, Elizabeth. This young lady married, by her father’s wish, her cousin, Lord Tulleophelim, who died very shortly afterwards without children. King James I. obliged the aged Earl of Ormonde, much against his will, to bestow the hand of his widowed daughter on one of his own Scotch favourites, Sir Richard Preston, whom he first created Baron Dingwall, and afterwards, in (what his Majesty was pleased to call) right of his wife, Earl of Desmond, an act which caused universal dissatisfaction in Ireland,—so time-honoured a title to be bestowed on an alien. Not content with this deed of injustice, James ordained that Preston should become possessed of the bulk of the Irish property which Thomas, Earl of Ormonde, had bequeathed to his successors in the title. At his death in 1614, the King used every endeavour to persuade Sir Walter Butler (who became eleventh Earl) to yield up his rights in favour of Lord Desmond, but, with the true spirit of his race, he showed a bold front to the tyrant, in consequence of which he was thrown into the Fleet prison, where he remained in captivity for eight years. His eldest son, Lord Thurles, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Poyntz, of Iron Acton, county Gloucester, by whom he had James, first Duke of Ormonde, and several other children.
The subject of our notice was born in 1610 at Newcastle House, in Clerkenwell, belonging to the Duke of that title, but inhabited at the time by Lady Thurles’s father, Sir John Poyntz. The infant was nursed by a carpenter’s wife at Hatfield, and remained in her charge, when his parents returned to Ireland, till he was three years old, when they sent for him; and the Duke used in after years to relate that he could call to mind, even at that tender age, how he had been carried in arms through the streets of Bristol, and what he then noticed on the bridge. He appears to have had a most retentive memory, for he also recollected being taken to visit Thomas, the aged Earl of Ormonde, who was living at his estate of Carrick-upon-Suir, and who felt a great interest in the child, not only as his future heir, but on account of his former friendship with Sir John Poyntz. The Duke often spoke in his later life of the impression his kinsman had made on him: a grand old man, with sightless eyes and long white beard, wearing his George round his neck, which he never laid aside, whether sitting in his chair or lying on his bed. He would take the boy on his knees and caress him, this last year of his life, for Earl Thomas died in 1614. James lived on in Ireland with his father and mother, till the unfortunate death of the former, who was drowned off the Skerries on his voyage to England in 1619, v.p.
The little Lord Thurles accompanied his mother to London the following year, and went to school at Finchley, under a Roman Catholic priest, who educated him in his own creed,—the actual Earl of Ormonde and all the younger branches of the family adhering to the Church of Rome. But Thurles was a ward of the Crown, and the King removed him from Finchley, and transferred him to Lambeth Palace, to be brought up as a Protestant, under Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury. The Primate troubled himself very little as regarded the youth’s education, probably because he received no allowance whatever, even for the maintenance of his pupil. To the young Lord himself James only doled out the paltry sum of forty pounds a year for all expenses. The biographer of the second Duke, in alluding to these circumstances, says that ‘intelligence found means to supply the want of education.’ Even after his marriage Lord Thurles studied Latin, from his uncle’s domestic chaplain, when on a visit to Iron Acton. He also acquired a knowledge of the Irish language, which he found of the greatest service to him during his government, enabling him to communicate personally with the Irish chiefs. He became, indeed, in every way a most accomplished gentleman; his grandfather, the stout-hearted Earl of Ormonde, had endured imprisonment and hardship of all kinds rather than submit to the unjust demands of the King, or surrender his lawful rights, but at the expiration of eight years he was released, and a great portion of his estates restored to him,—upon which he hired a house in Drury Lane, and sent for his grandson from Lambeth Palace to come and reside with him. Lord Thurles was delighted with his emancipation from the dull atmosphere of the Primate’s roof. He mixed in all the gaieties of the town, and took especial pleasure in theatrical representations and in the society of the leading members of the profession. He was also a frequent attendant at Court, by the express wish of Lord Ormonde, who left him in London to make his way in the world, while he returned to Ireland to look after the property, which had been long neglected. The circumstances attending the marriage and courtship of Lord Thurles were of so romantic a nature, that we are induced to give them in detail, although reluctant to record a stumble on the threshold of so noble a career. It was at Court that he first saw his cousin, Lady Elizabeth Preston, daughter to Lord Dingwall and Desmond, already mentioned, by Lady Elizabeth Butler. She was a ward of the King’s, who had placed her under the care of Henry, Earl of Holland, who held an office at Court. Though very young, she had a perfect knowledge of all the family disputes, and had been much influenced in Lord Thurles’s favour by the advice of her kinsman, Lord Mountgarret, who not only highly commended the young man, but pointed out to the heiress that their union would be a means of reconciling all former difficulties. When the cousins met at Court, Elizabeth ‘liked the person of the young Lord, which was very handsome, his mien and manner witty, insinuating; and the vivacity of his parts, with the sprightly turn of his wit, made the conversation most pleasing to her.’ This was remarked on, and the King admonished Lord Thurles not to meddle with his ward. The secret of this was that the Duke of Buckingham had arranged with Lord Desmond that his nephew, Lord Feilding, should espouse Lady Elizabeth Preston, with a remainder to their heirs of her father’s titles. The said Earl of Desmond had also received from the King the power over the wardship and marriage of Lord Thurles, so that there seemed but little hope of the union on which the cousins had set their hearts. But Elizabeth had the spirit of her race. Her affections were irrevocably fixed, and she was in a humour to say with the beautiful bride of Van Artevelde:—