events and transmit it to Lord Bute. Both Grenville who succeeded him, and Buckingham who succeeded Grenville, regarded him with the utmost jealousy. Grenville made it an absolute condition that Bute should retire from the presence and counsels of the young king. He retired to Luton ; he afterwards travelled on the Continent under the name of Sir John Stuart He complained bitterly that he was not allowed " to enjoy that peace, that liberty, which is the birthright of the meanest Briton, but which has been
long denied me."The influence of Lord Bute over the king was great for a time, but it has been much exaggerated. After a few years it seems to have declined altogether. Both the king and Lord Bute soon disclaimed its existence, and there is no lack of corroboratory evidence But it was impossible to eradicate the notion that there was a back-stairs influence personified in Lord Bute. He was denounced in popular addresses before the king himself as a betrayer of the constitution, and mobs regularly broke his windows. Wilkes reviled him ; Junius thundered against him. Lord Chatham declaimed against him as one behind the throne greater than the throne itself. For twenty years he was regarded with invincible hostility and suspicion, yet we find him complaining that he had not the influence of an alderman in obtaining a position for his son. Horace Walpole gives a curious account of an offer being made to Chatham shortly before his death of making him premier with a dukedom, he himself being a secretary of state. The facts are not well ascertained, but Lord Mountstuart, afterwards first marquis of Bute, wrote to assert upon his honour that his father, Lord Bute, assured him that he had not thought of coming into place again.
Lord Bute had purchased an estate at Luton in Bedford shire, where Adams, the Scottish architect, had built him a magnificent residence. Here he formed an immense library, a superb collection of astronomical and philosophical instruments, and an admirable gallery of pictures, which are preserved in a large house appropriated to them in Warwick Square, London. On the summit of a plain Tuscan pillar in the grounds is an inscription in honour of his great friend and benefactress the Princess Dowager. He took great delight in architecture, and among other edifices built himself a marine villa on the edge of the cliff, in Hampshire, overlooking the Needles and the Isle of Wight. He is said to have been an admirable tutor and father to his children, and to have taken a greater pleasure in simple,- natural delights than he could have found in courts. His death was occasioned through that intense love of natural science which had followed him through life. Seeing a new plant on the cliff he climbed towards it, and received a severe fall, which brought on an illness of which lie died.
The eleven months' premiership, during which he was mayor of the palace, was a singular episode in his prolonged life, a remarkable and unconstitutional experiment in politics which has never been repeated. Lord Bute pos sessed great virtues, great energy and ability, and was as able a premier as Newcastle, Grenville, or Rockingham. But the royal favouritism on which he relied proved the greatest bar to his political success, and has left a slur, exaggerated, but not altogether ill-deserved, on his memory.
BUTLER, Alban (1710-1773), a hagiologist, was born in Northampton in 1710. After completing his education at the Roman Catholic college at Douay, he was appointed professor of philosophy, and afterwards professor of divinity. In 1745 he travelled through France and Italy in company with the earl of Shrewsbury and some other gentlemen. On his return he was sent as member of a mission to Staffordshire, but was soon afterwards appointed chaplain to the duke of Norfolk, whose nephew he educated and accompanied on a Continental tour. After returning to England he was made president of the English college at St Omer s, where he remained till his death in 1773. His great work, the Lives of the Saints, was first published in 5 vols. 4to, 1745, and has passed through many editions. It exhibits great industry and research, with considerable power of expression, and is in all respects the best work of its kind in English literature.
BUTLER, Charles (1750-1832), nephew of the preceding, a miscellaneous writer, was born at London in 1750. He was educated at Douay, and in 1775 entered at Lincoln s Inn. He had considerable practice as a conveyancer, and after the passing of the Act Geo. III. c. 32 was called to the bar in 1791. In 1832 he received the silk gown, and was made a bencher of Lincoln s Inn. He died on the 2d June in the same year. His literary activity was enormous, and the number of his published works is very great. The most important of them are the Reminiscences, 1821-1827 ; Horce Biblicce, 1797, which has passed through several editions; Horce Juridicce Subsccivo?, 1804; Book of the Roman Catholic Church, which was directed against Southey and excited some controversy ; lives of Erasmus, Grotius, and some others. He also edited his uncle s Lives of the Saints and Fearne s Essay on Contingent Remainders, aud completed Hargrave s edition of Coke upon Littleton.
BUTLER, James, Duke of Ormond. See Ormond.
BUTLER, Joseph, Bishop of Durham, one of the most distinguished writers on theology and ethics, and perhaps the man of greatest intellectual power in the English church during the 18th century, was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, on the 18th May 1692. His father was a respectable linen- draper of that town, who had retired from business some time before the birth of Joseph, his youngest son. The family belonged to the Presbyterian community, and it was their wish that young Butler should be educated for the ministry in that church. The boy was placed under the care of the Rev. Philip Barton, master of the grammar school at Wantage, and remained there for some years. He was then sent to a dissenting academy at Gloucester, which was afterward removed to Tewkesbury. The head master was Mr Samuel Jones, a man of considerable abilities, several of whose pupils afterwards attained to eminence in the church. Butler s fellow-student and most intimate friend was Seeker, who afterwards became archbishop of Canterbury.
While at this academy two important events occurred in Butler s life. He gradually became dissatisfied with the principles of Presbyterianism, and after much deliberation resolved to join the Church of England. In this resolution his father reluctantly acquiesced. About the same time he began to study with care Clarke s celebrated Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which had been published a few years previously. With great modesty and secrecy Butler, who was then in his twenty-second year, wrote to the author propounding certain difficulties with regard to the proofs of the unity and omnipresence of the Divine Being. Clarke answered his unknown opponent with a gravity and care that showed his high opinion of the metaphysical acuteness displayed in the objections, and published the correspondence in later editions of the Demonstration. Butler acknowledged that Clarke s reply satisfied him on one of ths points, and he subsequently gave his adhesion to the other.
Little is known of his life at the university ; his most attached friend was Edward Talbot, son of Dr William Talbot, afterwards Bishop of Durham. In 1718, on the recommendation of Talbot and Clarke, he was nominated preacher at the Chapel of the Rolls, and continued there
till 1726. In 1721 he had been appointed by Bishop
