Elizabeth Butler, Duchess of Ormond

Elizabeth was born on 25 July 1615.[1] She was the only child of Richard Preston and Elizabeth Butler. Her father's title was Lord Dingwall at the time she was born.[2] He had been born a younger son of the Prestons of Whitehill, Scottish gentry of the Edinburgh area, who was a page at the court and became a favourite of King James VI of Scotland who made him a groom of his bedchamber, Lord Dingwall in Scotland[3] and Earl of Desmond in Ireland. Elizabeth's mother, the Countess of Desmond, was the only surviving child of Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, called Black Tom, and the widow of Theobald Butler, 1st Viscount Butler of Tulleophelim.[4] Her parents married in 1614 not long before her father's death on 22 November 1614.

Elizabeth's maternal grandfather, Black Tom, had settled most of his estate on his male heir, his nephew Walter, who succeeded him as Earl of Ormond in 1614 according to the normal rules of succession of his title. However, Black Tom was a Protestant, whereas his nephew Walter, called "of the rosary beads", was a devout Catholic. King James I considered this a setback for his Irish politics. He intervened to keep the Ormond lands in Protestant hands. He decided that most of the estate should go to Black Tom's only child, Elizabeth Butler, Elizabeth Preston's mother. The king furthermore ordained that Black Tom's daughter should marry his favourite Richard Preston, her father and a Protestant.

In 1628 Elizabeth Preston, aged 13, only child, became a rich heiress when both her parents died in quick succession. First, on 10 October, her mother died,[5] and was buried in Westminster Abbey,[6] then on 28 October her father drowned during a passage between Dublin and Holyhead.[7][8] His title as Earl of Desmond became extinct, but Elizabeth inherited his Scottish title as Lord Dingwall to become Baroness Dingwall suo jure as the title had been created for her father with remainder to heirs and assigns whatsoever.[9] As the only child Elizabeth inherited all her parent's part of the Ormond estate. As she was a minor, she became a ward of the crown. Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland (1590–1649) was appointed her guardian.

At Christmas 1629, aged 14, she married her cousin, James Butler,[11] styled Viscount Thurles at the time. This was the courtesy title of the heir apparent of the earls of Ormond; so she became Viscountess Thurles.

They had eight sons, five of whom died in childhood, and two daughters. Five children survived into adulthood:[12]

1. Thomas (1634–1680), predeceased his father, but had a son who would become the 2nd Duke;[13]
2. Richard (1639–1686), became the first and last Earl of Arran of the 1662 creation and predeceased his father;[14]
3. Elizabeth (1640–1665), married Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield[15] and had affairs with James Hamilton[16] and the Duke of York;[17]
4. John (1643–1677), became the Earl of Gowran;[18] and
5. Mary (1646–1710), married William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire.[19]

As a consequence of the marriage the Ormond estate, as her grandfather, the 10th Earl, had held it, was reunited. She and James went to live in the Ormonde Castle at Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary.

In 1633 Elizabeth became countess of Ormond when her husband succeeded to the earldom.[20] Lady Ormond, as she was now, moved into Kilkenny Castle, the family seat, on the outbreak of the 1641 Rebellion, while her husband took command of the king's army in Dublin. She was still living in the castle when Kilkenny became the capital of the Catholic Confederation. There she helped Protestant refugees, sheltering them in the castle until 1642 when she was allowed to rejoin her husband in Dublin. In the city she continued to help refugees, and assisted the reinforcement of Dublin's defences during a siege in 1646.

On her husband's promotion to marquess on 30 August 1642 she became a marchioness.[21] She followed him to England in 1647 after the surrender of Dublin to the parliamentary forces. In 1648 when he renewed his support for the royalist cause, Lady Ormond moved to Caen, France with their children.[22] The marquess joined the family in 1651, at which point the family had no money. In 1652, Butler and their children returned to England to plead with Cromwell for income from the land she owned. After a long delay, she received enough funds in 1657 and was allowed to live at her home in Dunmore, County Kilkenny, under the condition that she would not correspond with her husband.[23]

Following the restoration of Charles II, Butler sent her husband valuable political information from Ireland, and the couple were later reunited in England. Her husband was given a dukedom in March 1661,[24] and in 1662 he was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland, serving until 1669 and again from 1677 to 1685. So she became duchess and vicereine. Butler hosted entertainment and spent lavishly on restoring and improving the family estates, but her personal correspondence reveals that she was concerned about the debts of her husband and sons. Her eldest son Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory, suddenly died in 1680.[25]

Her health began to decline in 1681, and she died in London on 21 July 1684.[26] She was buried at Westminster abbey on 24 July.[27]

• Burke, Bernard (1949), A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (99th ed.), London: Burke's Peerage Ltd.
• Carte, Thomas (1851), The Life of James Duke of Ormond, 3 (new ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Chester, Joseph Lemuel (1876), Registers of Westminster Abbey, London: Private Edition
• Cokayne, George Edward (1890), The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, 3 (1st ed.), London: George Bell and Sons – D to F (for Desmond & Dingwall)
• Cokayne, George Edward (1895), The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, 6 (1st ed.), London: George Bell and Sons – N to R (for Ormond)
• Debrett, John (1828), Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1 (17th ed.), London: F. C. and J. Rivington - England
• Dunboyne, Patrick Theobald Tower Butler, Baron (1968), Butler Family History (2nd ed.), Kilkenny: Rothe House
• Hamilton, Anthony (1888), Memoirs of Count Grammont, translated by Walpole, Horace, Philadelphia: Gebbie & Co
• Pepys, Samuel (1893), Wheatley, Henry Benjamin (ed.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 2, London: George Bell & Sons - 1 April 1661 – 31 December 1661
• Paul, Sir James Balfour (1906), The Scots Peerage, Founded on Wood's Edition of Sir Robert Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, 3, Edinburgh: David Douglas – Crawford to Falkland (for Dingwall)
• Perceval-Maxwell, Michael (2004), "Butler [née Preston] Elizabeth, duchess of Ormond and suo jure Lady Dingwall (1615–1684)", in Matthew, Henry Colin Gray.; Harrison, Brian (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 9, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 130–131, ISBN 0-19-861359-8
• Seaward, Paul (2004), "Charles II", in Matthew, Henry Colin Gray.; Harrison, Brian (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 11, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 122–145, ISBN 0-19-861361-X (for Restoration)
• Smyth, Constantine (1839), Chronicle of the Law Officers of Ireland, London: Henry Butterworth (for Table of reigns)

• Bourke, Angela (2002), "Elizabeth Butler, Duchess of Ormond", The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, New York: NYU Press, 5, p. 66, ISBN 9780814799079
• McAreavey, Naomi (2019), Eckerle, Julie A.; McAreavey, Naomi (eds.), "The Place of Ireland in the Letters of the First Duchess of Ormonde", Women's life writing and early modern Ireland, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 158–182, ISBN 9781496214287

• Genealogy of Elizabeth Preston, Baroness Dingwall on The Peerage website