ceeded by Thomas Button, afterwards dean of Wells and bishop of Exeter. Button died 3 April 1264, and was buried in the chapel of St. Mary behind the altar; on his tomb was his effigy in brass (Leland, Itin. iii. 108).
[M. Paris, v. 46, 212, 373, 375, 396, 423, 534, 590, vi. 229, 232, 390, ed. Luard; Annales Burton., Dunstapl., Theokes.; Ann. Monast. i. 156, 157, 300, iii. 205; Canon of Wells in Anglia Sacra, i. 565; Godwin de Præsulibus, 372; Cassan's Bishops of Bath and Wells, 133; Adam of Domerham, 523, ed. Hearne; John of Glastonbury, 224–34, ed. Hearne; Reshanger, 62, Camden Soc.; Dean and Chapter MSS. at Wells.]
BUTTON or BITTON, WILLIAM II (d. 1274), bishop of Bath and Wells, was nephew of the former bishop of the same name, and was also a relation of Walter Giffard, his immediate predecessor in the see of Bath and Wells. He was archdeacon of Wells. Giffard having been translated to the see of York in October 1266, William was elected bishop in February 1267, and received the temporalities on 4 March of that year. In view of the fact that the bishops of this see lost even the right of a seat in their chapter, it is interesting to note that in 1270 William presided over a meeting of the chapter, in which several new statutes were enacted (Ordinale, 57). This bishop was a man of a wholly different stamp from the uncle who preceded him. Little as we know of his work, he may be looked on as an example of the influence exercised by the preaching of the friars; for when Robert Kilwardby, the provincial of the Dominicans, was to be consecrated to the archbishopric of Canterbury, he declared that he would have the bishop of Bath to perform the rite on account of his eminent piety. He died 4 Dec. 1274, and was buried on the south side of the choir of his cathedral church. Though never acknowledged as a saint by the catholic church, he received the honour of popular canonisation. Crowds visited his tomb with prayers and offerings. Little progress probably had been made of late years in the work of building the church, and it seems that the effects of the storm of 1247 [see Button, William I, d. 1264] had not been repaired. The offerings brought to the shrine of ‘Saint’ William enriched the chapter, and are doubtless to be connected with a convocation held in 1284 ‘for finishing the new work and repairing the old.’ Somerset folk believed that the aid of the good bishop was especially effectual for the cure of toothache, and the belief lingered down to the seventeenth century. On the capitals of some of the pillars in the transepts of Wells Cathedral are figures representing people suffering from toothache, and it may be reasonably believed that those parts of the church were built from the offerings made at the saint's tomb soon after his death.
[Wykes, in Ann. Monast. iv. 194, 261; Matt. Paris Cont. 108; Reynolds's Wells Cathedral, Ordinale et Statuta; Somerset Archæol. Soc. Proc. xix. ii. 29; Godwin, De Præsulibus, 373; Cassan's Bishops of Bath and Wells, 141.]
BUTTON, Sir WILLIAM (d. 1654), royalist, was descended from the old family of Bitton or Button, so called from the parish of Bitton in the county of Gloucester. He was the eldest son of William Button of Alton, and of Jane, daughter of John Lamb, in the county of Wiltshire (Berry, Hampshire Pedigrees). Lloyd (Memoirs, 649) confounds him with his son who died in 1660, and the error is repeated by Jackson (Aubrey, Collections for Wiltshire, 190). Both state that he was educated at Exeter College under Dr. Prideaux, and attended Sir Arthur Hepton in his embassy through France and Spain, but the original source of these statements is the sermon preached on 12 April 1660 by Francis Bayly in the parish church of North Wraxall at the funeral of the second Sir William Button, to whom alone they apply. The father of this Sir William Button was raised to the baronetage on 18 April 1621 (Burke, History of the Commoners, iv. 370). During the civil wars he was a staunch royalist, and on this account his house Tokenham Court was twice stripped and his property carried off, the first occasion being in June 1643 by Sir Ed. Hungerford, when his loss was 767l., and the second in June 1644 by a party of horse from Malmesbury garrison, when it amounted to 526l. 6s. In the November following his estate at Tokenham was sequestrated, after which he lived at his manor of Shaw near Overton. In 1646 he was fined 2,380l. for ‘delinquency.’ He died on 28 Jan. 1654–5, and was buried in the vault in the north aisle of North Wraxall church. Lloyd, confounding him with his son, gives the date of his death erroneously as 1660. By his marriage with Ruth, daughter of Walter Dunche of Avebury, he left four sons and three daughters.
[Aubrey's Collections for Wiltshire, ed. Jackson, 190; Burke's History of the Commoners, iv. 370; Berry's Hampshire Pedigrees; Lloyd's Memoirs, 649.]
BUTTS, JOHN (d. 1764), painter, was born and bred in Cork, and with but little instruction developed extraordinary powers in landscape. His compositions, in which he is fond of introducing figures, are Claude-
