took possession of Kilkenny in the name of the confederates. He then detached parties to secure other adjacent towns, which was done with such success that in the space of a week all the fortresses in the counties of Kilkenny, Waterford, and Tipperary were in their power. After this he was chosen general of the confederates; but the county of Cork having insisted on choosing a general of its own, his forces were thereby considerably weakened, and he was defeated by the Earl of Ormonde at Kilrush, near Athy, on 10 April 1642; but, returning to Kilkenny, he was chosen president of the supreme council formed there in the following summer. In 1643 he was at the battle of Ross, fought by General Preston against the Marquis of Ormonde, and he took part in the capture of various fortresses. He died in 1651, but was excepted, though dead, from pardon for life or estate by the crown in the act of parliament for the settlement of Ireland passed on 12 Aug. 1652. He was buried in the chancel of St. Canice's cathedral, Kilkenny, under a monument with a eulogistic Latin inscription. By his first wife, Margaret, eldest daughter of Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, he had three sons and six daughters, of whom Edmund became fourth viscount. He was again twice married: to Thomasine (afterwards named Elizabeth), daughter of Sir William Andrews of Newport, and to Margaret, daughter of Richard Branthwaite, serjeant-at-law, and widow of Sir Thomas Spencer of Yarnton, Oxfordshire, but by neither of these marriages had he any issue.
[Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, iv. 49–66; State Papers, Irish Series; Carew State Papers; Cox's History of Ireland; Carte's Life of the Duke of Ormonde.]
BUTLER, RICHARD (d. 1791), major-general in the United States army, was a native of Ireland, and went to America some time before 1760. At the outbreak of the war of independence he became a lieutenant-colonel of the Pennsylvania troops, and in 1777 held that rank in Morgan's rifle corps, with which he distinguished himself on various occasions. In 1781 he was with Lafayette in Virginia, and at the close of the war was lieutenant-colonel of the 9th Pennsylvania regiment. About 1787 he was agent for Indian affairs in Oregon; and in St. Clair's expedition against the Indian tribes in 1791 commanded the right wing of the force, with the rank of major-general. The troops, composed of United States regulars and militia, were attacked in their camp, about twenty miles from Miami Towns, by the Indians, on the morning of 4 Nov. 1791, and defeated with heavy loss. Butler, after fighting bravely on foot in the front line, was shot down just as he mounted his horse, and was tomahawked and scalped.
[Drake's American Biography (1852); Diary of Colonel Winthrop Sargent, adjutant-general, U.S. army, in the campaign of 1791, edited by his grandson (Wormsloe, 1851, 4to).]
BUTLER, SAMUEL (1612–1680), poet, was the fifth child and the second son of Samuel Butler, a Worcestershire farmer, and a churchwarden of the parish of Strensham, where the poet was baptised on 8 Feb. 1612. The entry is in his father's handwriting. The elder Samuel Butler owned a house and a piece of land, which was still called Butler's tenement fifty years ago; the value of this was about 8l. a year (see Notes and Queries, 6th series, iv. 387, 469). According to Aubrey, however, the poet was not born in this Strensham house, but at a hamlet called Bartonbridge, half a mile out of Worcester. The father, according to Wood, leased of Sir Thomas Russell, lord of the manor of Strensham, an estate of 300l. a year. The boy was educated in Worcester free school. He has been identified, but against probability, with the Samuel Butler who went up to Christ Church, Oxford, from Westminster in 1623; another legend, somewhat better supported, says that he proceeded for a short time, about 1627, to Cambridge. It is probable that the first of several situations which he occupied was that of attendant, with a salary of 20l. a year, to Elizabeth, countess of Kent, at her residence of Wrest in Bedfordshire. The fact that he found Selden under the same roof makes it probable that this occurred in 1628. Selden seems to have interested himself in Butler's talents, and to have trained his mind. The young man spent several years at Wrest, and employed his leisure in studying painting under Samuel Cooper, or more probably with him, for Cooper was not yet illustrious. Butler is said to have painted a head of Oliver Cromwell from life; his pictures were long in existence at Earl's Coombe in Worcestershire, but were all used, in the last century, to stop up broken windows. Butler spent some years of his early life at Earl's Coombe as clerk to a justice of the name of Jeffereys. He seems to have served as clerk or attendant to a succession of country gentlemen. One of these was Sir Samuel Luke of Cople Hoo, near Bedford, a stiff presbyterian, and one of Cromwell's generals. This person sat for the character of Hudibras,
A Knight as errant as e'er was;
