Honora (FitzGerald) Butler (abt. 1520 - 1577)

Born about 1520 in Ireland

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 1577 at about age 57 in Ireland

Biography

Lady Honora FitzGerald was the illegitimate daughter of James FitzMaurice FitzGerald (10th Earl of Desmond).^[1][2]

The Dictionary of Irish Biography profile for Honora's husband, Piers Butler, calls her "apparently the illegitimate daughter" of James, 10th Earl of Desmond.^[3]

Honora married Piers Butler of Grallagh, County Tipperary,^[1] who was brother to Edmond, Baron of Dunboyne.^[4] The 2 brothers feuded throughout their lives over land inheritance, and the fact that their 2 wives were from rival factions.

Research Notes

Cracrofts Peerage states that James, 10th Earl of Desmond, and Amy O'Brien had an "only child", Joan FitzGerald; and then lists Honora FitzGerald as a 2nd child of James, with unspecified mother.

The anonymity of Honora's mother is supported by the manuscript of Sir William Betham, whose "Pedigree of the Earls of Desmond" specifies that the only child from the marriage of Awny O'Brien and the Earl of Desmond was Joan Fitzgerald, who married James, 9th Earl of Ormond. ^[5][6]

However, Lodge's Peerage says that Honora was daughter of James, 10th Earl of Desmond, and Elinor Walsh, daughter of Robert Walsh of Castle Hoel, Co. Kilkenny.^[7]

Piers Butler was said to have married twice, but according to his Dictionary of Irish Biography profile, all 12 children (9 sons and 3 daughters) were by Honora. (Piers' other recorded wife was Elinor Grace, daughter of Sir Oliver Grace MP and Mary FitzGerald.)

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} "Desmond, Earl of (I, 1329 - 1582)", http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/desmond1329.htm

   Lady Honora FitzGerald, mar. as his second wife Piers Butler, of Grallagh, co. Tipperary (d. 11 Jan 1571), 2nd son of Sir James Butler, 10th Feudal Lord of Dunboyne, co. Meath, by his wife Lady Joan Butler, 3rd dau. of Piers [Butler], 8th Earl of Ormonde and 1st Earl of Ossory, and had issue

2. ↑ Butler, Bryant. The Butler Family of Lebanon, Connecticut (The Tuttle Co., Rutland, Vt., 1934) Page 15
3. ↑ https://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a1277
4. ↑ James Graves, "The Earls of Desmond", Journal of the Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, Third Series, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1869), pedigree appears after p.460:
   • https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25497799.pdf
5. ↑ James Graves, "The Earls of Desmond", Journal of the Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, Third Series, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1869), pedigree appears after p.460:
   • https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25497799.pdf
6. ↑ Profile of Sir William Betham in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
   • https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Betham,_William_(1779-1853)_(DNB00)
7. ↑ Lodge’s Peerage of Ire. (Archdall ed. 1784) Vol. VI, p. 221:
   • http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/butlers/notes.htm