Lieutenant-General James FitzThomas Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, KG, PC (19 October 1610 – 21 July 1688), was an Anglo-Irish statesman and soldier, known as Earl of Ormond from 1634 to 1642 and Marquess of Ormond from 1642 to 1661. Following the failure of the senior line of the Butler family, he was the second representative of the Kilcash branch to inherit the earldom.

His friend, the Earl of Strafford, secured his appointment as commander of the government army in Ireland. Following the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, he led government forces against the Irish Catholic Confederation; when the First English Civil War began in August 1642, he supported the Royalists and in 1643 negotiated a ceasefire with the Confederation which allowed his troops to be transferred to England. Shortly before the Execution of Charles I in January 1649, he agreed the Second Ormonde Peace, an alliance between the Confederation and Royalist forces which fought against the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

During the 1650s he lived in exile on the continent with Charles II of England. After the Stuart Restoration in 1660, Ormond became a major figure in English and Irish politics, holding many high government offices such as Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

Birth and origins James was born on 19 October 1610 at Clerkenwell, London, the eldest son of Thomas Butler and his wife Elizabeth Pointz. His father, who was known by the courtesy title of Viscount Thurles, was the eldest son and heir apparent of Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond, called "Walter of the rosary beads". His father's family, the Butler dynasty, was Old English and descended from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II in 1177.

James's mother, Lady Thurles, was English and Catholic, a daughter of Sir John Pointz - of Iron Acton, Gloucestershire - and his second wife Elizabeth Sydenham. James's birth house in Clerkenwell belonged to him, his maternal grandfather.

James was one of seven siblings, three brothers and four sisters, who are listed in his father's article. James was not only the eldest son but also the first-born as his eldest sister was born after him in 1612.

Early life Shortly after his birth his parents returned to Ireland where they were welcome to Black Tom (the 10th Earl of Ormond) but not to Walter, his heir apparent, who had opposed James's father's marriage into the English Poyntz family, who were Catholic but only gentry.

Black Tom died on 22 November 1614. James's grandfather Walter succeeded as the 11th Earl and James's father became heir apparent with the courtesy title of Viscount Thurles. While the title was secure, the Ormond lands were claimed by Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond, who had married Elizabeth, Black Tom's only surviving child.

In 1619 his father perished on his way from Ireland to England in a shipwreck near the Skerries off the coast of Anglesey. James inherited his father's courtesy title Viscount Thurles. The year following that disaster, his mother brought young Thurles, as he now was, back to England, and placed him, then nine years old, at school with a Catholic gentleman at Finchley — this doubtless through the influence of his grandfather, the 11th Earl. His mother remarried to George Mathew of Thurles.

On 26 May 1623, King James I, made Thurles a ward of Richard Preston, Earl of Desmond, and placed him at Lambeth, London, under the care of George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury to be brought up as a Protestant. The Ormond estates being under sequestration, the young Lord had but £40 a year for his own and his servants' clothing and expenses. He seems to have been neglected by the Archbishop — "he was not instructed even in humanity, nor so much as taught to understand Latin".

When fifteen Thurles went to live with his paternal grandfather (then released from prison) at Drury Lane. His grandfather, the 11th Earl of Ormond, was now an old man and did not interfere much with his Protestant religious education. This was very important for Thurles's future life, as it meant that, unlike almost all his relatives in the Butler dynasty, he was a Protestant. This strained his relationship with the rest of his family and dependants, as they suffered from land confiscations and legal discrimination on account of their religion, while he did not.

Now having more means at his command, Thurles entered into all the gaieties of the court and town. At eighteen he went to Portsmouth with his friend George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham intending to join the expedition for the relief of La Rochelle; a project abandoned upon the Duke's assassination.

It was during his London residence that he set himself to learn Irish, a partial knowledge of which proved most useful to him in after years.

Marriage and children About six months after his visit to Portsmouth, Thurles first saw at Court, and fell in love with, his cousin Lady Elizabeth Preston, only child and heiress of Richard Preston, Earl of Desmond and his wife Elizabeth. Charles I gave his consent by letters patent, on 8 September 1629. At Christmas 1629, they married putting an end to the long-standing quarrel between the families and united their estates, one of which was Kilkenny Castle

James and Elizabeth had eight sons, five of whom died in childhood, and two daughters. Five children survived into adulthood: Thomas (1634–1680), predeceased his father, but had a son who would become the 2nd Duke Richard (1639–1686), became first and last Earl of Arran of the 1662 creation and predeceased his father Elizabeth (1640–1665), married Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield and had affairs with James Hamilton and the Duke of York John (1643–1677), became the Earl of Gowran Mary (1646–1710), married William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire

With Strafford Thurles's career began in 1633 with the appointment as head of government in Ireland of Thomas Wentworth, the future Earl of Strafford, by whom Ormond was treated with great favour. Writing to Charles I, Wentworth described Ormond as "young, but take it from me, a very staid head".

On 24 February 1633, Thurles, on the death of his grandfather, succeeded to the earldom as the 12th Earl of Ormond. Lord Ormond, as he now was, became Wentworth's chief friend and supporter. In January 1635 he became a member of the Irish Privy Council. Wentworth planned large-scale confiscations of Catholic-owned land, both to raise money for the crown and to break the political power of the Irish Catholic gentry, a policy which Ormond supported. Yet, it infuriated his relatives, and drove many of them into opposition to Wentworth and ultimately into armed rebellion. In 1640, with Wentworth having been recalled to attend to the Second Bishops' War in England, Ormond was made commander-in-chief of the forces in Ireland. The opposition to Wentworth ultimately aided impeachment of the Earl by the English Parliament, and his eventual execution in May 1641.

Rebellion and Civil War Fighting the rebellion and the Confederates On the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Ormond found himself in command of the Irish Royal Army based in Dublin. Most of the country was taken by the Catholic rebels, who included Ormond's Butler relatives. However, Ormond's bonds of kinship were not entirely severed. His wife and children were escorted from Kilkenny to Dublin under the order of the rebel leader Richard Butler, 3rd Viscount Mountgarret, another member of the Butler dynasty.

Early in 1642 the Irish Catholics formed their own government, the Catholic Confederation, with its capital at Kilkenny, and began to raise their own regular troops, more organised and capable than the feudal militias of the 1641 rebellion. Also in early 1642, the king sent in troop reinforcements from England and Scotland. The Irish Confederate War was underway. Ormond mounted several expeditions from Dublin in 1642 that cleared the area around Dublin of Confederate forces. He secured control of the Pale, and re-supplied some outlying garrisons, without serious contest. The Lords Justices, Sir William Parsons, 1st Baronet of Bellamont and Sir John Borlase, who suspected him because he was related to many of the Confederate leaders, recalled him from command, but he succeeded securing much of County Kildare in February 1642. Next, he managed to lift the siege of Drogheda in March 1642. In April he relieved the royalist garrisons at Naas, Athy and Maryborough, and on his return to Dublin he won the Battle of Kilrush against a larger force. On 30 August 1642 he was created Marquess of Ormond. He received the public thanks of the English Parliament and a monetary reward, and in September 1642 was put in command with a commission direct from the king.

In March 1643, Ormond ventured with his troops to New Ross, County Wexford, deep in the territory of the Catholic Confederation, and won a small but indecisive victory there (Battle of New Ross) before returning to Dublin. Nevertheless, Ormond was in a difficult situation. The Confederates held two-thirds of the island. The English Civil War, which started in September 1642, had removed the prospect of more reinforcements and supplies from England, and indeed the king desired to recall troops. In addition, the Scots Covenanters, who had landed an army in the northeast of Ireland at Carrickfergus to counter the Catholic rebellion in that part of the country in early 1642, had subsequently put northeast Ireland on the side of the English Parliamentarians against the king; and the relatively strong Protestant presence in and around Derry and Cork City was inclined to side with the Parliamentarians as well, and soon did so.

Ormond Cessation

Isolated in Dublin in what was now a three-sided contest, with the king desiring to reduce the Irish Royal Army, Ormond negotiated a "cessation" or ceasefire for a year with the Confederates. The truce began on 15 September 1643, By this treaty the greater part of Ireland was given up into the hands of the Catholic Confederation (leaving only districts in the north, the Dublin Pale, round Cork City, and certain smallish garrisons in the possession of Protestant commanders). This truce was vehemently opposed by the Lords Justices and the Protestant community in general in Ireland.

Soon afterwards, in November 1643, by the King's orders, Ormond dispatched a body of his troops into England to fight on the Royalist side in the Civil War, estimated at 4,000 troops, half of whom were sent from Cork. In November 1643 the king appointed Ormond as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was sworn in on 21 January 1644. The previous occupant of this post, Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, had never set foot in Ireland. Ormond's assigned mission was to prevent the king's Parliamentarian enemies from being reinforced from Ireland, and to aim to deliver more troops to fight for the Royalists in England. To these ends, he was instructed to do all in his power to keep the Scottish Covenanter army in the north of Ireland occupied. He was also given the king's authority to negotiate a treaty with the Catholic Confederation that could allow their troops to be redirected against the Parliamentarians. In August 1644, the cessation with the Confederates was extended for another year.

Negotiations with the Irish Confederates