Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/81

 mon on Dr. Parr. Butler's library was rich in Aldines, and in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek manuscripts. The latter were purchased for the British Museum, and are now numbered there Addit. MSS. 11828–12117.

[Gent. Mag. 1840, pt. i. 203–5; Le Neve's Fasti Eccl. Angl.; Baker's St. John's Coll. (ed. Mayor), i. 311.]  BUTLER, SIMON (1757–1797), first president of the United Irishmen of Dublin, was the third son of Edmund, tenth Viscount Mountgarret, and his wife Charlotte, the second daughter of Sir Simon Bradstreet, bart. He was born in July 1757. Having been called to the Irish bar in Michaelmas term, 1778, he was made a king's counsel and a bencher of the Honourable Society of the King's Inns, Dublin, in Trinity term, 1784. With Wolfe Tone he was a zealous leader of the United Irishmen, and on 9 Nov. 1791 he presided at the first meeting of the Dublin society of that body. He compiled a digest of the popery laws, which was published in 1792, and made a great impression on the minds of the people. For this work, and ‘for other professional business,’ the ‘Catholic Committee’ voted him 500l. On 1 March 1793 Butler and Oliver Bond [q. v.], as chairman and secretary respectively of the Dublin Society, were summoned before the Irish House of Lords on account of a paper which had been issued by the society, referring to a committee of secrecy of that house. They avowed the publication, but submitted that it contained nothing unconstitutional. The lords, however, voted it a ‘false, scandalous, and seditious libel; a high breach of the privileges of this house, tending to disturb the public peace, and questioning the authority of this High Court of Parliament,’ and thereupon ordered the defendants to be imprisoned in Newgate gaol for six months, and to pay a fine of 500l. each. On the termination of his imprisonment, Butler went with his friend, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, another energetic leader of the United Irishmen, to Scotland, where they continued to aid in directing the proceedings of the society, until they were compelled to fly the country. On 18 Jan. 1795 Butler married Eliza, the daughter of Edward Lynch of Hampstead, in the county of Dublin, by whom he had an only son, Edward. Though his name was erased from the list of king's counsel in 1793, he remained a bencher of the King's Inns until his death, which took place at his lodgings in Brompton Row on 19 May 1797, in the fortieth year of his age. An etching of him and his friend Rowan as they appeared in the streets of Edinburgh in 1793, by Kay, will be found in the second volume of ‘Original Portraits,’ No. 230.

[Kay's Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings (1877), ii. 121, 168, 171, 176–7; Plowden's Historical Review of the State of Ireland (1803), ii. pt. i. 376–94; Sir Richard Musgrave's Memoirs of the different Rebellions in Ireland (1802), i. 112–54; Gent. Mag. 1797, lxvii. pt. i. 529; Annual Register, 1797, p. 97.] 

BUTLER, THEOBALD (d. 1205–6), first butler of Ireland, was son and heir of Hervey (Herveus) Walter of Amounderness in Lancashire and of Suffolk, by Maud (Matilda), daughter and coheir of Theobald de Valoines. Her sister Berthe (Berta), the other coheiress, married the celebrated Randulf de Glanville, justiciary of England [q. v.], who was thus uncle by marriage to Theobald. This much is certain from his own charters, as is also the fact that he was elder brother of Hubert Walter [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, but beyond this all is obscure. The various theories of earlier writers, especially the belief that Theobald was nearly of kin to Becket (cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xii. 30), are exhaustively discussed by Carte in the introduction to his ‘Life of James, Duke of Ormonde,’ in which he has collected much useful information. Lord A. C. Hervey argues that he sprang from the family of Hervey, while Mr. Glanville-Richards claims his father as a younger brother of Randulf de Glanville. But this latter view is doubted by Mr. Yeatman, who discusses the point in his introduction to Mr. Glanville-Richards' work, and it must certainly be rejected. Theobald's surname appears in the various forms,, , , and.

Theobald first appears in the ‘Liber Niger’ (i.e. circa 1166) as holding Amounderness ‘per servicium 1 militis.’ The received statement that he accompanied Henry II to Ireland (1171–2), and was made by him butler of Ireland ‘soon after 1170,’ though accepted by Lynch (p. 79), and repeated by Mr. Gilbert (p. 31), rests upon no evidence, and must be dismissed as erroneous, as must also that of Carte that he appears previously (1170) with Henry in France. It was probably in 1182 (, p. 248;, p. 41) that he witnessed, with ‘John the king's son,’ Randulf de Glanville's charter to Leystone, and it was through the influence of Randulf that, in 1185, he accompanied John to Ireland. The freight of his ‘harnesium’ thither is charged for in that year (Rot. Pip. 31 H. II). Landing with John at Waterford on 25 April, he received a grant to Randulf and himself of 5½ cantreds in