Richard Butler, the next brother to James, 9th Earl of Ormond, was himself a powerful landowner in 16th-century Ireland. He married 4 times and divorced twice, and had a reported 11 children with his last wife.
Richard, 1st Viscount Mountgarret, married a reported 4 times. There is some discrepancy as to the order of the marriages, but if Ellen Butler gave birth to 11 children and outlived Richard, it is almost certain she was the final spouse:[1]
3) Eleanor FitzGerald, daughter of John, [de facto 12th] Earl of Desmond, and widow of Thomas Tobin of the Comsy, whom he also soon divorced; and
4) about 1547, Ellen, daughter of his 1st cousin Theobald Butler[2] of Neigham -- who was the son of Edmund of Neigham, illegitimate (yet full-blood) elder brother of Piers, 8th Earl of Ormond.[3]Ellen was the mother of all his legitimate children, bearing him 6 sons and 5 daughters; she outlived him, but according to chancery documents, she went mad a few years before her death some time after 1575.
Richard also had at least 3 illegitimate children.
Richard had 2 brothers, James and Thomas, and 6 sisters, of whom Eleanor, Margaret, and Katharine are the best known. Nothing is known of his childhood, except that during his teenage years – after 1515 – the traditional hostility between the Butlers and FitzGeralds, which had lain dormant for many years, was reactivated with the connivance of the English government.
Richard first appears in contemporary records in 1527 as the recipient of a grant of church lands in Co. Kildare made by Bishop Thomas Dillon. Almost certainly, his [maternal] uncle Gerald (Gearóid Óg) FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Kildare, viewed the grant as a deliberate slight by the Butlers and their allies. Thereafter, whenever Richard is mentioned in the state papers until the mid-1530s it is invariably in connection with the anti-Geraldine activities of his family; he is described as a commander of Butler forces in north Kilkenny, parts of Carlow, and, increasingly, in Wexford.
In 1533 he was involved in the series of border skirmishes along the Kilkenny–Upper Ossory frontier with the MacGiollapadraigs, [the Earl of] Kildare's allies, which culminated in the entrapment and death of his younger brother, Thomas Butler. Richard subsequently signed the articles drafted against Kildare for his alleged role in the killing -– articles that led eventually to the Earl's summons to England and the outbreak of the Kildare rebellion in 1534.
Following the defeat of the rebels, Richard's prospects blossomed as the Butlers reaped the rewards of helping to bring about their rivals’ collapse. He was a chief beneficiary of the Act of Absentees, which was passed in the Irish Reformation parliament of 1536–7, being granted leases of the manors of Old Ross, Dipps, and Fassagh Bantry in Co. Wexford formerly held by the Bigod earls of Norfolk. He also profited from the Dissolution of the Monasteries, receiving the estate of Inistioge Priory, Co. Kilkenny, and the tithes and spiritualities of Owney abbey in the territory of Eliogarty, Co. Tipperary. Despite strenuous local objections to his use of coyne and livery and other military exactions that were illegal under English law, his power in Wexford was consolidated in 1538 when he was made constable of Ferns Castle, a post he retained for 12 years.
His emergence as the second most powerful Butler lord in Ireland was completed in 1542 when, on his mother's death, he inherited her personal estate in Co. Kilkenny and New Ross. He made Ballyragget Castle[4] the main seat of his family.
But there his gains ended. Determined to prevent the Butlers from becoming as overbearing as the Kildare FitzGeralds, the government was reluctant to appoint Richard to high office. Even when his elder brother, James, 9th Earl of Ormond, died unexpectedly in 1546, the crown would not allow Richard to govern the Butler territories as James had directed. Accordingly, it rewarded him with one hand, on 23 October 1550 raising him to the peerage as Viscount Mountgarret and Baron of Kells, while with the other it sought to impose direct royal control over the vast Ormond patrimony that he was supposed to protect during the minority of his nephew, James's eldest son, Thomas, 10th Earl of Ormond.
Mountgarret spent the last years of his life serving on various government commissions in Kilkenny and Wexford, generally as a representative of his nephew Thomas, Earl of Ormond. In 1567–8, on the Earl's behalf, he participated in negotiations with crown officials over the abolition of coyne and livery in the Ormond lordship, a controversial step that helped to provoke the Butler rebellion of 1569. Although he and his eldest son Edmund Butler stayed loyal to the Earl of Ormond and the crown, two of his other sons, Piers and James, did not, and it was only because of Earl of Ormond's influence with the Queen that they were later pardoned.
Richard Butler died 20 December 1571 after a long illness and was buried at St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny. His tomb survives. Decorated with various symbols of the Passion, it strongly suggests his commitment to Catholicism. A bardic praise poem in his honour, by Torna Mac Maoílín, is included in the poem book (duanaire) of his [great nephew] Theobald Butler of Cahir, Co. Tipperary.
Children
Richard's 11 children with his 4th wife, Ellen Butler, as are follows -- 6 sons and 5 daughters, not in confirmed birth order:[5]
Edmund
Piers
Thomas
James
John
Theobald
Margaret
Ellis
Elinor
Katherine
Ellen
Among the more famous of his daughters was Elinor, who married 3 times and died ca.1601. Her 3 husbands were:
Thomas Tobin (d. before 1584), of Cumpshinagh, co. Tipperary. Uncertain of issue.
Gerald Blancheville (d.1594), son of Edmund. Gerald was Sheriff (1565) and M.P. (1585-86) of Co. Kilkenny. Two well-known sons: Edmond and Leonard, among other sons and daughters.[6][7][8][9]
Leads for further exploration -- this unsourced French family pedigree lists 11 children + spouses from Richard's marriage to Eleanor Butler:
Edmund, 2nd Viscount Mountgarrett, d. 24 Nov 1602. He m. Grizel FitzPatrick.
Piers Butler (of Kayer, Clounegeragh) d. 4 June 1599 and is buried at New Ross, Co. Wexford. He married Margaret Devereux (sister of Nicholas, below).
Thomas, d. after 18 Aug 1599. He m. Eleanor Power.[11]
John d. after 7 May 1610. He m. an O'Meagher woman.
James d. after 19 May 1601.
Theobald
Margaret who m. Nicholas Devereux (brother of Margaret, above).
Mary Ellice who m. Walter Walsh.
Eleanor d. before 1615. She m. 1) Thomas Tobyn,[12] who died before 20 Nov 1581. She m. 2) Gerald Blanchville, who died 6 April 1594.
Joan who m. Matthew FitzHarris.
Ellen who m. Oliver Shortall.
Sources
A brief biography is included in James Wills' Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen, from the earliest times to the present period (Dublin: Macgregor, Polson 1840-47), pp.473-4:
Richard's Wikipedia profile records 3 marriages and 9 children, who subsequently married into the Walsh, Shortall, Devereux, Tobin, Blancheville, Butler, and FitzPatrick families.
Wikipedia list of all the Viscounts Mountgarret, from 1550 to the present day:
↑ Wikipedia (accessed 5 Jan 2022) gets it wrong here -- they were not 1st cousins, but 1st cousins once-removed.
↑ Edmund and Piers were full-blood brothers (same parents), but Piers' 2 elder brothers (Edmund and Theobald) were deemed "illegitimate" simply because their parents (1st cousins themselves) had not received papal dispensation prior to marriage. This was a significant ruling, because it paved the way for 3rd son Piers to become 8th Earl of Ormond, ahead of his 2 elder brothers.
↑ Rev. Patrick Comerford's blog entry on Ballyragget Castle explains how it remained in the Mountgarret line for over 2 centuries:
↑ The children of Gerald Blanchville and Ellinor Butler:
Leonard (d.v.p.), married in 1573 to Joan, daughter of Richard Butler of Polestown.
James (d,v.p.)
Edward (d.v.p.)
Edmund, his heir, later knighted
Ellen, m. William St. Leger, of Cloghela
Eleanor, m. Robert Walsh, of Ballybrushin
Margaret, m. Edmund Dalton, of Kilmodalie, who d.1629
↑ Dennis Walsh, "The Blanchville Family: Early Documented History":
"Edmund Blanchville (b.1585) was 9 years old at the time of his father's death and had livery of seisin on attaining his majority in 1606. In 1623, he received the honour of knighthood from Viscount Falkland, Lord Deputy.
For their part in the manslaughter of Edmund Purcell, of Ballyfoyle Castle, in 1625, Sir Edmund and his brother, Leonard Blanchville, succeeded after considerable trouble in having a royal pardon, Dec. 12th, 1629.
Sir Edmund appears to have been a lunatic for a considerable time before his death, which occurred after 1647. By his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter Butler, of the Old Abbey (an illegitimate son of Thomas the Black, 10th Earl of Ormond), he had a son, Garret, or Gerald Blanchville, who took a prominent part in the Catholic Confederate Movement of 1641, and died Feb. 21st, 1646-47, and is buried in St. Canice's Cathedral."
↑ Gerald Blanchville was descended from Sir James Butler of Polestown, via "John fitz James Butler, younger brother of Pierce the Red, [8th] Earl of Ormond", who was father to daughter and heiress Margaret, who married "Edmond Blanchvvylle of Blanchvvyllesstown".
Dennis Walsh, "The Blanchville Family: Early Documented History"
↑ George Dames Burtchaell supports the lineage that Gerald Blanchville descended from Sir James Butler of Polestown in "The Family of Rothe of Kilkenny", Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, 4th Series, Vol. 7, No. 67 (July 1886), pp. 501-537, see footnote on p.510.
↑ As his 2nd wife (ca.1601) Thomas Butler took Ellice FitzGerald, daughter of Sir John FitzGerald, 7th Lord Decies, and Ellen FitzGibbon, granddaughter and niece of the 10th and 11th White Knights.
↑ Historian Gabriel Redmond places Eleanor as daughter of Thomas Power of Culefin, son of Richard, 1st Baron le Poer, and Catherine Butler (daughter of Piers, 8th Earl of Ormond, and his wife Margaret FitzGerald.
Gabriel O'C. Redmond, Historical memoir of the family of Poher, Poer, or Power; with an account of the barony of Le Power and Coroghmore, County Waterford (Dublin 1891). p.24:
↑ Thomas was the father of James Tobin, of Killaghy, Co. Kilkenny. An authenticated family genealogy starting with Thomas Tobin and continuing for 7 generations is viewable online in Funeral Certificates, and Draft Grants D, ca.1670-1780, from the Genealogical Office of the National Library of Ireland, p.29:
Richard Butler, 1st Viscount Mountgarret (1500 20 May 1571) was the son of Piers Butler, 8th Earl of Ormond and Lady Margaret Fitzgerald. He married his first cousin Eleanor Butler, daughter of Theobald Butler of Polestown, the illegitimate brother of the 8th Earl of Ormond. He was created 1st Viscount Mountgarret in 1550.
Richard Butler, 1st Viscount Mountgarret (1500 20 May 1571) was the son of Piers Butler, 8th Earl of Ormond and Lady Margaret Fitzgerald. He married his first cousin Eleanor Butler, daughter of Theobald Butler of Polestown, the illegitimate brother of the 8th Earl of Ormond. He was created 1st Viscount Mountgarret in 1550.