BUTLER, SIR WILLIAM FRANCIS (1838- ), British soldier, entered the army as an ensign in 1858, becoming captain in 1872 and major in 1874. He took part with distinction in the Red River expedition (1870-71) and the Ashanti operations of 1873-74 under Wolseley, and received the C.B. in 1874. He served with the same general in the Zulu War (brevet lieut.-colonel), the campaign of Tel-el-Kebir, after which he was made an aide-de-camp to the queen, and the Sudan 1884-85, being employed as colonel on the staff 1885, and brigadier-general 1885-1886. In the latter year he was made a K.C.B. He was colonel on the staff in Egypt 1890-1892, and brigadier-general there until 1892, when he was promoted major-general and stationed at Aldershot, after which he commanded the southeastern district. In 1898 he succeeded General Goodenough as commander-in-chief in South Africa, with the local rank of lieutenant-general. For a short period (Dec. 1898-Feb. 1899), during the absence of Sir Alfred Milner in England, he acted as high commissioner, and as such and subsequently in his military capacity he expressed views on the subject of the probabilities of war which were not approved by the home government; he was consequently ordered home to command the western district, and held this post until 1905. He also held the Aldershot command for a brief period in 1900-1901. Sir William Butler was promoted lieutenant-general in 1900. He had long been known as a descriptive writer, since his publication of The Great Lone Land (1872) and other works, and he was the biographer (1899) of Sir George Colley. He married in 1877 Miss Elizabeth Thompson, an accomplished painter of battle-scenes, notably "The Roll Call" (1874), "Quatre Bras" (1875), "Rorke's Drift" (1881), "The Camel Corps" (1891), and "The Dawn of Waterloo" (1895).
BUTLER, a borough and the county-seat of Butler county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on Conoquenessing Creek, about 30 m. N. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 8734; (1900) 10,853, of whom 928 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 20,728. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg, and the Bessemer & Lake Erie railways, and is connected with Pittsburg by two electric lines. It is built on a small hill about 1010 ft. above sea-level, and commands extensive views of the surrounding valley. The Butler County hospital (1899) is located here. A fair is held in Butler annually. Oil, natural gas, clay, coal and iron abound in the vicinity, and the borough has various manufactures, including lumber, railway cars (especially of steel), paint, silk, bricks, plate-glass, bottles and oil-well tools. The value of the city's factory products increased from $1,403,026 in 1900 to $6,832,007 in 1905, or 386.9%, this being much the greatest rate of increase shown by any city in the state having in 1900 a population of 8000 or more. Butler was selected as the site for the county-seat of the newly-formed county in 1802, was laid out in 1803, and was incorporated in the same year. The county and the borough were named in honour of General Richard Butler, a soldier in the War of Independence and leader of the right wing of General St Clair's army, which was sent against the Indians in 1791 and on the 4th of November was defeated, Butler being killed in the engagement.
BUTLER (through the O. Fr. bouteillier, from the Late Lat. buticularius, buticula, a bottle), a domestic servant who superintends the wine-cellar and acts as the chief male servant of a household; among his other duties are the conduct of the service of the table and the custody of the plate. The butler of a royal household was an official of high rank, whose duties, though primarily connected with the supply of wine for the royal table, varied in the different courts in which the office appears. In England, as superintendent of the importation of wine, a duty was payable to him (see Butlerage and Prisage); the butlership of Ireland, Pincerna Hiberniae, was given by John, king of England, to Theobald Walter, who added the name of Butler to his own; it then became the surname of his descendants, the earls, dukes and marquesses of Ormonde (see Butler, family, above).
BUTLERAGE AND PRISAGE. In England there was an ancient right of the crown to purveyance or pre-emption, i.e. the right of buying up provisions and other necessities for the royal household, at a valuation, even without the consent of the owner. Out of this right originated probably that of taking customs, in return for the protection and maintenance of the ports and harbours. One such customs due was that of "prisage," the right of taking one tun of wine from every ship importing from ten to twenty tuns, and two tuns from every ship importing more than twenty tuns. This right of prisage was commuted, by a charter of Edward I. (1302), into a duty of two shillings on every tun imported by merchant strangers, and termed "butlerage," because paid to the king's butler. Butlerage ceased to be levied in 1809, by the Customs Consolidation Act of that year.
BUTO, the Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Uto (hierogl. W'zy·t), confused with the name of her city Buto (see Busiris). She was a cobra-goddess of the marshes, worshipped especially in the city of Buto in the north-west of the Delta, and at another Buto (Hdt. ii. 75) in the north-east of the Delta, now Tell Nebesheh. The former city is placed by Petrie at Tell Ferain, a large and important site, but as yet yielding no inscriptions. This western Buto was the capital of the kingdom of Northern Egypt in prehistoric times before the two kingdoms were united; hence the goddess Buto was goddess of Lower Egypt and the North. To correspond to the vulture goddess (Nekhbi) of the south she sometimes is given the form of a vulture; she is also figured in human form. As a serpent she is commonly twined round a papyrus stem, which latter spells her name; and generally she wears the crown of Lower Egypt. The Greeks identified her with Leto; this may be accounted for partly by the resemblance of name, partly by the myth of her having brought up Horus in a floating island, resembling the story of Leto and Apollo on Delos. Perhaps the two myths influenced each other. Herodotus describes the temple and other sacred
places of (the western) Buto, and refers to its festival, and to its oracle, which must have been important though nothing definite is known about it. It is strange that a city whose leading in the most ancient times was fully recognized throughout Egyptian history does not appear in the early lists of nome-capitals. Like Thebes, however (which lay in the 4th nome of Upper Egypt, its early capital being Hermonthis), it eventually became, at a very late date, the capital of a nome, in this case called Phtheneto, "the land of (the goddess) Buto." The second Buto (hierogl. 'Im·t) was capital from early times of the 19th nome of Lower Egypt.
See Herodotus ii. 155; Zeitschr. f. ägyptische Sprache (1871), I; K. Sethe in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, s.v. "Buto"; D.G. Hogarth, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxiv. I; W.M.F. Petrie, Ehnasya, p. 36; Nebesheh and Defenneh.
(F. Ll. G.)
BUTRINTO, a seaport and fortified town of southern Albania, Turkey, in the vilayet of Iannina; directly opposite the island of Corfu (Corcyra), and on a small stream which issues from Lake Vatzindro or Vivari, into the Bay of Butrinto, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea. Pop.(1900) about 2000. The town, which is situated about 2 m. inland, has a small harbour, and was formerly the seat of an Orthodox bishop. In the neighbourhood are the ruins of the ancient Buthrotum, from which the modern town derives its name. The ruins consist of a Roman wall, about a mile in circumference, and some remains of both later and Hellenic work. The legendary founder of the city was Helenus, son of Priam, and Virgil (Aen. iii. 291 sq.) tells how Helenus here established a new Trojan kingdom. Hence the names New Troy and New Pergamum, applied to Buthrotum, and those of Xanthus and Simoïs, given to two small streams in the neighbourhood. In the 1st century B.C. Buthrotum became a Roman colony, and derived some importance from its position near Corcyra, and on the main highway between Dyrrachium and Ambracia. Under the Empire, however, it was overshadowed by the development of Dyrrachium and Apollonia. The modern city belonged to the Venetians from the 14th century until 1797. It was then seized by the French, who in 1799 had to yield to the Russians and Turks.
BUTT, ISAAC (1813-1879), Irish lawyer and Nationalist leader, was born at Glenfin, Donegal, in 1813, his father being the Episcopalian rector of Stranorlar. Having won high honours at Trinity, Dublin, he was appointed professor of political economy in 1836. In 1838 he was called to the bar, and not only soon obtained a good practice, but became known as a politician on the Protestant Conservative side, and an opponent of O'Connell. In 1844 he was made a Q.C. He figured in nearly all the important Irish law cases for many years, and was engaged in the defence of Smith O'Brien in 1848, and of the Fenians between 1865 and 1869. In 1852 he was returned to parliament by Youghal as a Liberal-Conservative, and retained this seat till 1865; but his views gradually became more liberal, and he drifted away from his earlier opinions. His career in parliament was marred by his irregular habits, which resulted in pecuniary embarrassment, and between 1865 and 1870 he returned again to his work at the law courts. The result, however, of the disestablishment of the Irish Church was to drive Butt and other Irish Protestants into union with the Nationalists, who had always repudiated the English connexion; and on 19th May 1870, at a large meeting in Dublin, Butt inaugurated the Home Rule movement in a speech demanding an Irish parliament for local affairs. On this platform he was elected in 1871 for Limerick, and found himself at the head of an Irish Home Rule party of fifty-seven members. But it was an ill-assorted union, and Butt soon found that he had little or no control over his more aggressive followers. He had no liking for violent methods or for "obstruction" in parliament; and his leadership gradually became a nullity. His false position undoubtedly assisted in breaking down his health, and he died in Dublin on the 5th of May 1879.