General Notes

James Butler, b. probably 1392, d. 23 Aug 1452, 4th Earl of Ormond; m. (1) c 28 Aug 1413 Joan de Beauchamp, d. Aug 1430.  [Ancestral Roots]

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James, the 4th Earl, known as "The White Earl," had many interests--perhaps too many.  His absence from Ireland led to fratricide in his Palatinate, and he himself became involved in tedious feuds with the Talbots.  He was several times governor of Ireland, there being, in the opinion of the Council, "no man within this land so mighty and so able to keep this land as he is."  He was a seasoned warrior, having served Henry V just after, if not at, Agincourt.  He was also a great lover of such peaceful pursuits as antiquity and archaeology, history, and heraldry.  Altogether he must have got a lot out of life and given much in return.  He was a benefactor of St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny; he gave lands he had inherited in England to the English College of Arms and he persuaded Henry V to create a Chief Herald for Ireland.  A robust and corpulent man, he died at 62 of the plague at Ardee and was burried in St Mary's Abbey in Dublin.  By his first wife Joan Beauchamp, daughter of Lord Abergavenny, he had at least three sons, each of whom succesively, inherited his earldom, was swept into the vortex of the turmoil in England and died without male issue.

The eldest of them, the 5th Earl, was a prominent Lancastrian.  Though governor of Ireland for several periods, he spent most of his life in England where Henry VI created him Earl of Wiltshire, a Knight of the Garter and Lord Treasurer.  Inevitably he partook in the dreary battles which later came to be known as the Wars of the Roses--St Alban's, Wakefield, Mortimer's Cross and, bloodiest of all, Towton.  After the Yorkist triumph at Towton, he was executed, aged about 40, and his head was set upon London Bridge for all to see.  Moreover, he and his brothers were attainted.  So the fortunes of the family were at a low ebb when Edward IV came to the throne.

But not for long.  Edward IV genially regarded the 6th Earl as "the goodliest knight he ever beheld and the first gentleman in Christendom", and added that "if good breeding, nurture and liberal qualitites were lost in the world, they might all be found in John, Earl of Ormond."  In 1475 the attainder was accoredingly annulled by the Irish Parliament. [Butler Family History]