days, and all merchants and shopkeepers, both protestants and papists, to make a return of the amount of powder in their possession. The militia was put on guard, arms were sent from England, and Dublin Castle was jealously guarded. Ormonde was urged to measures still more severe, and refused to use them, thus raising the bitterest disappointment among those who hoped to profit by confiscations, and drawing upon himself the attacks of Shaftesbury and the other patrons of the plot. Ossory defended his father in the Lords with spirit, and Charles refused to consent to the removal of his old and tried servant. Ireland kept perfectly quiet, and the credit of the plot in England suffered in consequence, but a fictitious plot was concocted to give it support. In the midst of the trouble that ensued Ormonde heard of the death of his pure and gallant son Ossory, between whom and himself there had always existed the utmost affection and confidence. He shortly lost both his sister and his wife, the latter on 21 July 1685 (ib. vii. 498), and, later, several of his grandchildren. In the beginning of May 1682, the country having quieted down as soon as the king had mastered the exclusionists, Ormonde went to court, where he was at once employed in furnishing an answer to Anglesey's letter on Castlehaven's memoirs, in which the memory of Charles I was reflected on. He was now in constant attendance on the king, and was particularly active in securing the election of tory sheriffs for London, which compelled Shaftesbury to leave the country. On 9 Nov. an English dukedom, being vacant by the death of Lauderdale, was conferred upon Ormonde. In the following February he was dangerously ill (ib. vii. 376 a), but recovered sufficiently to set out again for Ireland in August.
Scarcely had he reached Dublin, however, before he was recalled to make way for the Earl of Rochester. This was in October. The causes of this sudden decision are not clear, though it is probable that Charles had made up his mind to favour the catholics in a manner which he thought Ormonde would not approve. Before he had time to hand over his government, however, the king died, and Ormonde's last act was to cause James II to be proclaimed in Dublin. His arrival in London on 31 March 1685 was signalised by a show of popular respect even more remarkable than on former occasions. At the coronation of James he carried the crown as lord steward, but otherwise lived as retired a life as possible. In January 1685-6 his second son, Richard, the earl of Arran, died, and in February Ormonde retired to Cornbury in Oxfordshire, leaving it only to attend James in August on his progress in the west. He signalised his loyalty to protestantism and the church of England in 1687 by opposing the attempt of James to assume the dispensing power in the case of the Charterhouse, and it is to the credit of James that in spite of Ormonde's refusal to yield to his solicitation in this matter, or to listen to endeavours now made to induce him to turn catholic (Carle, iv. 685, Clar. Press), he retained the duke in all his offices and held him in respect and favour to the last. The king paid Ormonde two personal visits when laid up with gout at Badminton. In 1688 he was taken for change of air to Kingston Hall in Dorsetshire, where in March he had a violent attack of fever from which he recovered with difficulty. On 22 June he was seized with ague, and on Saturday, 21 July, the anniversary of his wife's death four years before, died quietly of decay, not having, as he rejoiced to know, 'outlived his intellectuals.' He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the night of Saturday, 4 Aug. He had eight sons and two daughters, of whom only the two daughters Elizabeth, married to Philip Stanhope, the earl of Chesterfield, and Mary, married to Lord Cavendish, the first duke of Devonshire survived him. His grandson, James Butler (1665-1745) [q. v.], son of Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory [q. v.], his second child, succeeded him in the title.
[The chief authorities for Ormonde's life are Carte, especially the letters in the Appendix, and the Carte Papers in the Bodleian; Cox's and Leland's Histories of Ireland; Pepys's and Evelyn's Diaries, and the other diaries and memoirs of the period; the article in the Biographia Britannica; Burke's Peerage and Lodge's Portraits; while Mr. J. T. Gilbert's description and analysis of the Ormonde manuscripts at Kilkenny (which had previously neither been catalogued nor arranged), in the Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep., are of the utmost value.]
BUTLER, JAMES, second Duke of Ormonde (1665–1745), was born in Dublin Castle, 29 April 1665, the second but eldest living son of Thomas, Earl of Ossory [q. v.], and of his wife Emilia, daughter of de Beverweert, governor of Sluys. In 1675 he was sent to France 'to learn the French air and language, the two things which' the first duke his grandfather 'thought the best worth acquiring in that country' (Carte). But his tutor, one de l'Ange, having 'in a manner buried' the boy among the tutor's relations at Orange, and having otherwise proved unsatisfactory, the duke summoned his grand-son home and entered him at Christ Church,
