The Letters of the First Duchess of Ormonde, Volume 40

The Letters of the First Duchess of Ormonde, Volume 40
Author: Elizabeth Butler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 760
Release: 2021-05-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9781649590183

This volume is the first to bring together the entire extant correspondence of one of the most significant women in early modern Ireland, Elizabeth Butler, first Duchess of Ormonde. She was the wife of James Butler, twelfth Earl and first Duke of Ormonde, who, as Ireland's only duke and three times its lord lieutenant, was a figure of considerable importance in seventeenth-century Ireland. But far from being overshadowed by her powerful husband, Butler was a person of significant power and influence in her own right. Descended from the tenth Earl of Ormonde, she brought a hefty portion of the Ormonde estate to the marriage. As Countess, Marchioness, then Duchess of Ormonde, as well as three times vicereine and a high-status courtier, she sat at the pinnacle of Irish and English society, unmatched by any other Irish woman of the period in terms of her wealth, social standing, and power. Her surviving correspondence reveals her importance within the Ormonde-Butler family and in the social, cultural, and political life of seventeenth-century Ireland. The volume comprises more than three hundred letters written by Ormonde to her husband and family, agents and servants, and friends and clients. Spanning six decades, these letters are meticulously transcribed, edited, and annotated, and the volume includes a substantial scholarly introduction, family trees, a glossary, and other resources.

The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610-1745

The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610-1745
Author: Toby Christopher Barnard
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2000
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780851157610

Biographical studies of the two Dukes of Ormonde illuminate aspects of the operation of political power in seventeenth-century Ireland, and, on a wider European stage, the predicaments facing the nobility.