Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 1.djvu/264

 214 COMPLETE PEERAGE arklow " Butler" [who was possessed, possibly in 1177, but certainly in 1205, of the Lordship of Arklow], and that from him it has descended to his heirs male, thereby vesting in each successive Earl of Ormonde of the house of Butler. In support of this assertion he urges (p. 219) that "it continued to be enjoyed by the heir male of the Butler family, even when, under Henry VIII, the heir male had ceased to hold the Earldom, " and that it was " so enjoyed by the successive heirs male who became Earls. " (*) He also mentions (p. 220) its recognition, under Charles II, " in various Royal instruments," and speaks of "the multiplicity of proofs and documents still to be found respecting his Lordship's [Lord Ormonde's] right, as heir male, to the ancient feudal Barony of Arklow " (p. 91). In accordance with this view the holder of this Earldom has very frequently been consid- ered as " Baron Arklow of Arklow " [I.]. On the other hand, the claim of the family of Butler to this title (such claim having in June 1881 been specially insisted upon in a circular, issued by Lord James W. Butler C") ), has been discussed by J. Horace Round, in an able article in Coll Gen., pp. 42-48. He very truly observes (i) "that there is not one scrap or tittle of direct evidence to prove that a Barony of Arklow [I.] was ever cr., or even that any lineal ancestor of the present Marquess ever sat as Baron Arklow in any Pari, of Ireland ; " (2) that by William Marshal on becoming, jure uxoris, Lord of Leinster. It is in virtue of this fief that Lynch and others have attempted to claim a feudal Barony for him and his descendants. " (°) In the British Museum is a curious letter from this Walter, Earl of Ormonde [1614], the h. male (then imprisoned in the Fleet by James I, who had espoused the cause of the h. gen.), to Camden, running thus — " I entreated you some fortnight past to do me the favour to make search to see if Tibbot Fitz Walter was Lord Barron of Arclo ; he went over in King John's time and Henry the Second's tymc. What troble you shal receave for this busness shal be thankfully requiring [Qy. requited ?] by your loving friend, Walter Ormond and Oss. " C") His Lordship thus, more forcibly than grammatically, ends his letter — "I may conclude by adopting the distich of the head of the De Coucy family (freely Englished)^ ' I am no Duke nor Prince, I know, I am son of the twenty fifth Lord of Arklow, ' IVith Lord 'Jamei TVandesford Butler's compliments. " On this statement J. H. Round sensibly remarks, " Twenty fifth Lord of Arklow his father indeed was, but in the sense that Ingelram de Ghysnes was hereditary Sire de Coucy; in the sense that John Hampden is described in his epitaph as 2^th hereditary Lord of Great Hampden. " Even, however, in this limited sense one can hardly see how the title of " Lord of Arklow " can belong to the more recent Earls, to whom that " Lordship " never belonged, inasmuch as " the Lordship of Arklow, co. Wicklow, " appears not only, as Round shews, to have belonged to the Boleyn family, during their tenure of the Earldom of Ormonde [I.], but to have been completely alienated from the Butler family after the attainder of 1 71 5. In 1750 it was settled by Margaret, Dowager Viscountess Allen [I.], as a marriage portion for her da. the Hon. Frances Allen, spinster, with John Proby, afterwards Lord Carysfort [I.]. See will of the said Viscountess, pr. Nov. 1758.