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 Ireland, and after a short stay with them joined the queen at Paris on 21 Jan. 1650-1. In June he was again at Paris waiting upon the Duke of York. After settling the duke's household he returned to Caen, and remained there until the young king's arrival at Paris after the battle of Worcester (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1-11 Nov. 1651), when, being at once placed on the privy council and consulted on all important business, he took up his permanent residence there. He was at this time in such dire straits for money that his wife went over in August 1652 to England to endeavour to claim Cromwell's promise of reserving to her that portion of their estate which had been her inheritance. After many delays (ib. 1652, 25 May, 1 June, 1 Aug.) she succeeded in getting 500l. in hand and an allowance of 2,000l. a year from estates around Dunmore House (ib. 1653, p. 145). Ormonde meanwhile had been in constant attendance on Charles, and accompanied him to Cologne when driven from France by Mazarin's treaty with Cromwell in 1655. He probably incurred at this time the queen mother's enmity by frustrating, at Charles's request, the attempts which she made to induce the Duke of Gloucester to become a catholic. During his absence at Paris on this mission he was reduced to such straits for money as to be compelled to pawn both his garter and the jewel presented him by parliament (, but cf. Portraits). He was employed also in negotiating a treaty with the Duke of Neuburg. In May he was at Antwerp (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1656, p. 319). In the end of 1656, when the king was residing at Brussels, he had the command of one of the six regiments formed out of the English and Irish on the continent for the service of Spain (ib. 1657, p. 5), and in October 1657 was quartered at Fumes. He attended Charles when the latter accompanied Don John in a reconnaissance on the works at Mardyke, and had his horse killed under him by a cannon-shot (Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. 149). In 1658, after being employed in Germany (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1658, p. 259), he volunteered to go in disguise to England to collect information, and landed at Westmarsh in Essex in the beginning of January (, 8 June 1658). Finding the chances of success in a rising very small, he persuaded the royalists to risk nothing at present, and after a month's stay in London succeeded in reaching Dieppe in March; thence he went to Paris, where he lay in strict concealment from Mazarin from February to April. With great difficulty he finally succeeded in joining Charles once more at Brussels in May. He was continually employed in all important transactions, such as the correspondence with Montague, the reconciliation of Charles with his mother, and the conference with Mazarin in 1659. He afterwards attended Charles at the treaty of Fontarabia. It was at this time that Ormonde discovered Charles's change of religion, and it was his revelation of the fact to Clarendon and Southampton that led to the insertion in the act for the security of the king's person of a clause making it treason to assert that the king was a catholic. He was actively engaged in all the secret transactions with the English royalists and Monck immediately before the Restoration, upon which event he went in the king's train to England.

In the distribution of honours which followed he had a considerable share; he was at once placed on the commission for the treasury and navy, made lord steward of the household, a privy councillor, lord-lieutenant of Somerset, high steward of Westminster, Kingston, and Bristol, chancellor of Dublin University, Baron Butler of Llanthony, and Earl of Brecknock in the English peerage, and on 30 March 1661 he was created Duke of Ormonde in the Irish peerage, and lord high steward of England, carrying the crown in that capacity at the coronation (see, 23 April 1661). At the same time the county palatine of Tipperary, seized by James I from his grandfather Walter, was restored to him, and he recovered his own Irish estates, which had been parcelled out amongthe adventurers, as well as those which he had mortgaged, and the prisage of wines, hereditary in the family, while large grants in recompense of the fortune he had spent in the royal service were made by the king. In the following year the Irish parliament presented him with 30,000l. His losses, however, according to Carte, exceeded his gains by nearly a million, a sum incredibly large (, iv. 418, Clar. Press). As lord steward he was present at the birth of the Duchess of York's child. He was at once engaged in Irish affairs; the restoration of episcopacy was of course a foremost aim, and in August he secured the appointment of the four archbishoprics and twelve bishoprics, while he did much to improve the condition of the inferior clergy. He appointed Jeremy Taylor to the vice-chancellorship of the Dublin University to carry out useful reforms, and aided its prosperity in every way. He refused, however, to be mixed up in the disputes over the Bill of Settlement in 1661, until on 4 Nov. he was again made lord-lieutenant of Ireland. His journey thither was delayed by the king's marriage, when, as lord steward, he was sent to 