14 Earls of Wiltshire. 



in Ireland. Ormond then held the important office of Lord Deputy 

 of Ireland, and stood high in the confidence of the Sovereign ; both 

 he and his son being zealous partisans of the House of Lancaster. 

 The former dying in 1452, the Earl of Wiltshire succeeded him as 

 fifth Earl of Ormond. In 1454 he was made Lord Deputy of Ire- 

 land, and was appointed Lord Treasurer, and in the next year elected 

 a Knight of the Garter. The Earl of Wiltshire was with the King 

 in the battle of St. Albans, and fought on his behalf at Wakefield, 

 Mortimer's Cross, and Towton. In the last conflict, which sealed 

 the fate of the Lancastrians and established the supremacy of the 

 House of York, he was taken prisoner, and immediately executed. 

 By the general act of attainder passed in the same year (1461), 

 against the late King and his principal adherents, all the estates of 

 the Earl of Wiltshire were forfeited, and the Earldom became 

 a second time extinct. 



It does not appear from the evidence yet met with, that Butler 

 Earl of Wiltshire, or any of his family, possessed property within 

 the county. Through his first wife, Avicia, daughter and heir of 

 Sir Richard StaflTord, he had come into possession of large estates 

 in the counties of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, including the Isle 

 of Lundy, but of none it is believed in Wilts ;^ and he had in- 

 herited through his mother, Joane, widow of Humphrey de Bohun, 

 many manors in Essex, particularly that of Bochford, his chief seat 

 in England, and which afterwards passed to the Boleyn family, to 

 be noticed subsequently. The Arms borne by Butler, Earl of 

 Wiltshire, were those of Ormond ; or, a chief indented azure. 



III. Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire. 1470. 

 A few years later the dignity of Earl of Wiltshire was conferred 

 by Edward IV. upon Sir John Stafford, Knight, a grandson of 

 Humphrey first Duke of Buckingham and sixth Earl of Stafford. 

 This noble family had long been connected by property with the 

 county. The elder branch represented by the Duke of Bucking- 

 ham possessed the Manors of Knooke and Orcheston St. Mary, near 



1 Collect. Top. III. 265. Ealph Butler, Baron of Sudoley, was in 1470 Patron 

 of Upton Lovel, near Warminister. But this was a difterent branch ; so also 

 were the Butlers of Badminton who presented to the Church of Nettletou. 



