Charles Butler, 1st Earl of Arran


Charles Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, de jure 3rd Duke of Ormonde was an Irish peer. His uncle Richard was the 1st Earl of Arran of the first creation. The titles were re-created for Charles in 1693. He was the younger son of Thomas Butler 6th Earl of Ossory and Emilia von Nassau. His paternal grandfather was the 1st Duke of Ormonde and his elder brother was the 2nd Duke of Ormonde.

Birth and origin

Charles was born on 4 September 1671. He was the second and youngest surviving son of Thomas Butler and his wife Emilia. His father was known as Lord Ossory. He was heir apparent of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond but predeceased him and so never became duke. The Butlers were an Old English family. Charles's mother was Dutch. She descended from a cadet branch of the House of Nassau. Both parents were Protestant. They married on 17 November 1659.


They had eleven children, but only five seem to be known by name.

Early life

On 8 March 1693, Butler was created Earl of Arran in the Peerage of Ireland. The following year, on 23 January 1694, he was further created Baron Butler, of Weston in the County of Huntingdon, in the Peerage of England. Arran was a Lord of the Bedchamber to King William III, a Lieutenant-General in the Army, Colonel of the 3rd Troop of Horse Guards, Governor of Dover Castle, and Master-General of the Ordnance from 1712 to 1714.

Marriage

On 3 June 1705 he married Elizabeth Crew, Countess of Arran, daughter of Thomas Crew, 2nd Baron Crew and his second wife, the former Anne Airmine, daughter of Sir William Airmine, 2nd Baronet in Oatlands, at Weybridge in Surrey. The marriage was childless.

Later life

His eldest brother got involved in the Jacobite rising of 1715 and was attainted, whereupon all his honours were assumed to have been forfeit. However, it was later ruled that the attainder, enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain, applied to his British titles, but not to his Irish titles. Lord Arran therefore de jure succeeded on his brother's death on 5 November 1745 as 3rd Duke of Ormonde in the Peerage of Ireland, but was never aware of doing so. As such, he was the fourth and last member of the Kilcash branch that started with John Butler of Kilcash, the father of the 11th Earl, to succeed to the titles.
In 1721 he was allowed by act of the English Parliament to buy back the family estates that had been forfeited under his brother's attainder.
On 2 January 1722, the Old Pretender created Charles Duke of Arran in the Jacobite Peerage of England.

Death and succession

He died at his lodgings at Whitehall on 17 December 1758 and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster.
On his death, the Earldom of Arran, the Barony of Butler and the Jacobite Dukedom of Arran became extinct, along with the Dukedom and Marquessate of Ormonde. The rest of his de jure Irish titles, including the Earldom of Ormonde, passed to his kinsman John Butler, but remained dormant.
His claim to the Barony of Butler and the Lordship of Dingwall passed to his niece, Lady Frances Elliot, eldest daughter of the 1st Earl of Grantham and Arran's sister, the former Lady Henrietta Butler, and eventually passed to the Earls Cowper, the attainder finally being reversed in 1871 in favour of the 7th Earl.
Horace Walpole called him "an inoffensive old man, last of the illustrious house of Ormonde, and much respected by the Jacobites".