Naomi McAreavey
The First Duchess of Ormonde, Elizabeth Butler, née Preston (1615–84), is little known to scholars of early modern women’s writing, yet she is the author of the largest body of extant correspondence of any woman from seventeenth-century Ireland and was arguably the most powerful and well-connected Irish woman of her time.1 As Countess, Marchioness, then Duchess of Ormonde, as well as high-ranking Stuart courtier and three-times Irish vicereine, she sat at the pinnacle of Irish society through more than six decades of extraordinary social and political upheaval, unmatched by any other Irish woman of the period in terms of her wealth, social standing, and political sway. Her substantial correspondence reflects her importance within the Ormonde Butler family and in the social, cultural, and political life of seventeenth-century Ireland. Her three-hundred-plus surviving letters are addressed to her husband and family, agents and servants, and friends and clients and span the years between 1630 and 1684, traversing the 1641 rebellion, the wars of the Three Kingdoms, royalist defeat and exile, the Interregnum, the Restoration, and beyond. Together they offer an important Irish female perspective on these key decades of Three Kingdoms history; they illuminate the duchess’s crucial involvement in the protection and advancement of Ormonde family interests; and—most important for this chapter—they demonstrate the centrality of Ireland in her life and writing.
My chapter focuses specifically on letters written during the Interregnum (1649–60), a period that is crucial in establishing the importance of Ireland in the Duchess of Ormonde’s epistolary construction of self. These were the years when the Three Kingdoms were radically transformed in the wake of royalist defeat, and Elizabeth Ormonde reconstituted her status in the family, as her husband’s exile led to her compounding for a portion of their confiscated Irish estates. My chapter examines her epistolary life writing in the context of the changing dynamics of the Three Kingdoms, exploring her shaping of life-changing experiences, first during her own royalist exile in Caen; then as she petitioned the protectorate government for her family’s confiscated estate; then during her retirement at her house in Dunmore, County Kilkenny; and, finally, as she received news of the Restoration and prepared to be reunited with her husband in the London court. My chapter thus tracks her independent rise to power in her family and in Ireland through the process of successfully reclaiming part of the family’s Irish estates. Obtaining her lands with the right conditions to make it possible to retire to Ireland forced her to become a political agent in her own right, operating between England and Ireland as she negotiated between Oliver Cromwell in London and his commissioners in Dublin and utilizing political networks spanning the Three Kingdoms. When she finally settled in Dunmore, she functioned effectively as matriarchal head of the Ormonde Butler family, managing the estate, controlling the purse strings, overseeing improvements to the estate, and developing an Ireland-centered client base that she activated on her husband’s behalf at the Restoration. As Elizabeth Ormonde mobilized her own lineage and inheritance to establish herself, in her husband’s absence, as head of the family, Ireland moved to the heart of her epistolary self-representation, where it remained for the rest of her writing life.
Elizabeth Butler, née Preston, was born in 1615, the only child of Elizabeth Butler (d. 1628), sole surviving legitimate child of Thomas Butler, Tenth Earl of Ormonde (d. 1614); and Richard Preston, Baron Dingwall, later Earl of Desmond (d. 1628), a Scottish court noble and favorite of James VI and I.2 After the death of her maternal grandfather, the tenth earl, her father laid claim to the Ormonde title and estate in his wife’s name. Although he failed to obtain the earldom (which was entailed in the male line), thanks to the personal interventions of the king, Preston and his wife were controversially awarded more than half of the Ormonde estate at the expense of the eleventh earl, a prominent Catholic dissident.3 Ten years later, in October 1628, the estate was inherited by the couple’s thirteen-year-old daughter when she was bereaved of both parents. The orphaned girl was taken as a ward of the court and placed into the care of Henry Rich, First Earl of Holland. Plans were quickly made for her to marry her second cousin, James Butler, grandson and heir to the Eleventh Earl of Ormonde, who had also been brought up as a Protestant after being claimed as a ward of the Crown upon the death of his father and put into the care of the archbishop of Canterbury. The couple married in December 1629, and the reunification of the Ormonde title and estate in Protestant hands was secured when the groom inherited the earldom in 1633. In the years that followed, the new Earl of Ormonde rose from relative obscurity to become lord lieutenant of Ireland for the first of three times in November 1643. He commanded the king’s forces in Ireland during the wars of the Three Kingdoms, went into exile with Charles II after his defeat, and during the Restoration was lavishly rewarded for his loyalty with a dukedom.
Typical of the Irish elite of the period, the Duke and Duchess of Ormonde spent their lives between Ireland and England. Like her husband, the duchess was born in London, was raised in England, spent long stretches of her married life in England, and died and was buried in the English capital. Yet the couple had significant interests in Ireland, and their lives involved frequent journeys across the Irish Sea as well as long periods of residence in the country. They owned extensive land and several homes in Ireland, including the family seat at Kilkenny Castle, Ormond Castle in Carrick-on-Suir, and the duchess’s favorite house at Dunmore; they also occupied Dublin Castle during the duke’s three terms as lord lieutenant. During their lifetimes they owned or rented several homes in England, including a country residence at Moor Park and a London townhouse in St. James’s Square, and they had apartments in Whitehall, where the duke served Charles II in various roles, including the lord stewardship. The duke rose through the ranks of the Irish peerage (earl in 1633, marquis in 1642, duke in 1661), ultimately becoming a duke in the English peerage in 1682. The duchess shared her husband’s titles as his consort but also held the Scottish title of Baroness Dingwall in her own right. In Ireland the couple presided over a large and overwhelmingly Catholic kinship network, with the duchess’s correspondence revealing the substantial role she played in sustaining relationships with her Catholic in-laws. Her letters also provide evidence that she maintained contact with her father’s Scottish family, acting as advocate for her paternal cousin Sir George Preston and remaining close friends with Anne Hume, the widow of a friend of her father, who later married her husband’s half brother, Capt. George Mathew. The duke and duchess enjoyed significant Welsh connections through the duke’s half siblings, including Mathew, who, as the couple’s estate manager, was the recipient of the majority of the duchess’s surviving letters. Mathew, Hume, and Preston each enjoyed Welsh or Scottish ancestry, but their interests, as clients of the Duke and Duchess of Ormonde, lay squarely in Ireland.
Throughout her correspondence the Duchess of Ormonde consistently represents Ireland as part of the composite monarchy of the Stuart kings, but she only once describes England, Ireland, and Scotland collectively as the “Three Kingdoms”: upon hearing news of Charles II’s Restoration, she wrote to her husband to share her joy that “that Bondage under which the three kingdoms as well as my selfe has Sufferede, shouldbee now by his Mercye removede, and our Longe wisht for Blessinge of the kings restoratione at the Length Establishede to uss.”4 Elsewhere in her correspondence she occasionally refers to England and Ireland as “this kingdome” or “that kingdome,” depending on where she is writing. There are nineteen uses of the word “kingdome” throughout her letters; in contrast, the word “nation” appears only three times, and this includes two references from the Interregnum. Her conception of the relationship between the Three Kingdoms is fundamentally royalist, and she sees Ireland as one of the dominions of the Stuart kings. For her the relationship between Ireland and its neighbors is mutual; she does not assume the centrality of England (except as the location of king and court). In fact, throughout her correspondence the Duchess of Ormonde refers explicitly to Ireland nearly three times as often as to England (ninety-six to Ireland against thirty-six to England). If we add to this her allusions to specific Irish locations like Kilkenny (fifty-nine), Dunmore (thirty-seven), Carrick [Carrick-on-Suir] (ten), and Dublin (seventy-six), it is clear that Ireland is at the heart of her epistolary concerns. There are only two references to “Scotland” and one to the “Scots,” all of which are impersonal, which suggests that her interests in Scotland are focused on the Preston kin who had settled in Ireland; Wales is mentioned only when she describes her routes to England from Ireland via Holyhead. Ultimately, the Duchess of Ormonde’s “Three Kingdoms” model for the relationships within the archipelago is one in which only England and Ireland matter, and where (for her) Irish concerns are central and English concerns peripheral.
Although she lived her life between the two countries, the Duchess of Ormonde never describes herself or her family as “English” or “Irish.” “Irish” is used a mere three times in her correspondence, entirely reserved for Catholic natives; and “English” is used only ten times (five from the same Commonwealth testimony in which she remembers experiences in the 1641 rebellion), applying exclusively to settlers and newcomers. The duchess’s understanding of both the “English” and the “Irish” is strongly inflected by her perception of their relative social and economic status; in both cases she refers specifically to members of the middling and lower ranks of Irish society, with the possible implication that such categories do not apply to the highly mobile Irish elite. She tends to associate the lower-ranked “English” with positive qualities, while the “Irish” are represented negatively: for example, she once seeks a “good English responsable Tenant” for Dunmore, while elsewhere she accuses “tow Irishe Men” of thieving on her lands.5 Yet even these examples may better illuminate her sensitivity to distinctions in social rank rather than nationality and betray the fact that in early modern Ireland non-elite settlers generally occupied higher positions than non-elite natives and were therefore more likely to enter an aristocratic estate as tenants than as poachers.
The Duchess of Ormonde avoids religious categories in her letters even more than national ones. She never uses the term “Protestant,” although she does write to her husband in 1660 sharing her fears about the malevolent “Sectories and Phanatickes” that might threaten his life.6 Only once does she refer to the “Roman Catholiks,” again in a letter to her husband, this time about local resistance to the couple’s establishment of a Protestant school in Kilkenny.7 The duchess uses confessional labels only when they are absolutely necessary and certainly never as shorthand for national affiliations. Since the Duchess of Ormonde and her husband were Protestants vastly outnumbered by their Catholic kin, it is not surprising that she avoids the heavily fraught issue of religious identity in her letters, especially those written to Catholics (such as her brother-in-law Mathew). Instead, she overwhelmingly focuses on the beliefs that she and her correspondents share, and a nondenominational “God” is cited forty-four times in her letters. Even still, she rarely discusses religious matters, and there is little evidence in her letters that she was especially pious.
If the Duchess of Ormonde herself eschewed the labels of “Irish” or “English,” “Catholic” or “Protestant,” it remains difficult to place her within such binary categories. The Ormonde Butler family from whom she descended and into which she married are commonly described as Old English—that is, the descendants of the Anglo-Norman invaders of the twelfth century who had remained loyal to the English Crown but over the centuries had become increasingly assimilated with the Irish natives, sharing much of their language and culture and especially their religion. The Catholicism of the Old English is what marked them apart from the New English settlers who came to Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and who were promoted to positions of power at the expense of Catholics. When the Old English joined their co-religionists in rebellion in 1641, they indicated a stronger affinity with Irish Catholics than English Protestants. The Duchess of Ormonde and her husband opposed the rebellion, but they more fundamentally diverged from other Old English in their Protestantism. Acknowledging this distinction, historians have sometimes labeled the Duke of Ormonde “Anglo-Irish.”8 However, as a term that is most associated with the later Protestant Ascendancy, it is not only slightly anachronistic but perhaps also overemphasizes his Protestantism, which if not ambivalent was certainly not something he was particularly keen to highlight.9 “English-Irish” might be a preferable label since it acknowledges the couple’s dual national allegiances without specifically evoking their Protestantism. By also suggesting that “English-Irish” is a variant of a broadly “Irish” identity, the term also usefully privileges the Irishness of the Ormonde Butlers.
Even though she never uses the term to describe herself, I consider the Duchess of Ormonde “Irish” because Ireland, if not Irishness, is at the heart of her self-representation. Whether she writes in Ireland or to Ireland, all her surviving letters are about Ireland, its land, its people, its politics, and above all her family’s interests in the country. There is no doubt that for the Duchess of Ormonde Ireland is home; it offers safety and security, financial stability, and deep connections. England, in contrast, more often represents marginalization, alienation, disempowerment, and insecurity; her seemingly interminable stays there (1655–57, 1668–73) are marked by frustration, disenchantment, and an overwhelming desire to return home. This is distinctly her experience, however: her husband seemed at ease in both places and certainly appeared to feel more at home in England than his wife ever did. That this difference was shaped by the gendered division of roles and responsibilities in the marriage—the duke managing the family’s political position vis-à-vis the king, and the duchess looking after their landed interests—is the concern of the rest of the chapter, where I suggest that the couple’s different relationships with Ireland have their roots in the Interregnum and the journeys husband and wife take, literally in opposite directions from each other, as the duchess returned to Ireland from continental exile and the duke left Ireland for continental exile. As the couple swap places at the beginning of their decade-long separation, their distinct but mutually beneficial priorities are reflected in the duke throwing in his lot with the king and the duchess with country.
The Duchess of Ormonde’s relationship with Ireland was transformed by the circumstances of royalist defeat and exile. Since September 1648, the then Marchioness of Ormonde had lived in Caen, France, among other Irish royalists, where she had maintained a regular correspondence with Sir Edward Nicholas, secretary of state to Charles I (and later Charles II), and other key figures in the exiled court, sharing information pertaining to the ongoing wars in Ireland.10 Her letters reveal her role in mediating between the court in exile and her husband in Ireland as he fought for the last remaining Stuart kingdom. The eventual defeat of the king’s army forced the marquis to flee the country, but rather than the couple abandoning the family’s Irish interests altogether, Lady Ormonde stepped into the space left by her husband’s departure to ensure that the destruction of royalist interests in Ireland did not lead to the neglect of her family’s. She thus sought to safeguard the significant Ormonde estates from the moment her husband could no longer do so.
As she prepared to start the petitionary process, the marchioness wrote to Secretary Nicholas explaining the reasons for her decision. First, she described the circumstances that led to her husband’s flight from Ireland; insisting that the marquis refused to be a “furthar wittness of that Pepells disobedianse and Contempt of the kings othoritye,” she attributes his defeat to the disloyality of the Confederate Catholics.11 This is disingenuous, however, given her knowledge of the king’s culpability for his Irish Catholic subjects’ loss of faith. In January 1649 the marquis had concluded the Second Ormonde Peace with the Confederate Catholics, which promised religious toleration in exchange for troops to fight for the king. But on May 1, 1650, Charles II signed the Treaty of Breda with the Scottish Covenanters and under the terms of the treaty pledged to abolish Catholicism in his realms. The king’s betrayal of the deal that her husband had brokered precipitated the collapse of the precarious royalist alliance in Ireland and the final destruction of royalist interests in the country, but the marchioness skirts over these issues, instead scapegoating the Confederate Catholics for the failings of the king and his lord lieutenant.
Elizabeth Ormonde carefully distinguishes her husband from his erstwhile Confederate allies, whom she dismisses as disloyal and self-interested, and establishes the marquis as an exceptional figure and the only true representative of Irish royalism. The marquis is characterized by his selfless devotion to the king, with his wife claiming that his unwavering royalism, even in defeat, meant that he “did absolutlye refuse to Treate or acsept anye Condistions from Cromwells Partye; though very good ons have bine offerede hime Consarninge his Estate.” She draws attention to his considerable financial losses and emphasizes their family’s ensuing destitution when she points out that her husband acted “with soe Litell Consideratione to what might Consarne his Future ^Subsistanse^ as hee hass made noe kind of provitione for it.”12 Although grounds for complaint, her husband’s lack of concern for his family’s welfare is more positively construed as an instance of his commendable—and self-sacrificing—devotion to the king.
While claiming that her husband’s actions have effectively subordinated her family’s needs to those of the king, the marchioness suggests that responsibility for their family’s welfare now falls on her shoulders. “I begine to See that my Nesesities will Ere Longe Forse mee to what of all the things in the world is the most Contrarye to My inclinatione,” she confesses to Nicholas, her insistent use of the first-person singular implying that a decision that was in fact made in consultation with her husband was entirely hers.13 She therefore ensures that as she moves to negotiate with Cromwell and his Commonwealth government, her husband’s impeccable royalist credentials are upheld. She, on the other hand, is forced to abandon her own royalism as she sets her sights on the family’s estates in Cromwellian Ireland. In her formal petition, dated May 2, 1652, circumstance and epistolary convention force her to humble herself before the lord protector. She writes with ostentatious deference, addressing Cromwell as “My Lord” twice and “your Lordshipp” nine times, using double negatives in expressing her wish that she will be thought “not uncapabill” of receiving his favor, and signing herself “your Lordshipps humbel Sarvant.”14 Yet she perhaps adds a subversive flourish if the black wax with which her letter was sealed was meant to signify her continued mourning for the martyred King Charles I.
Certainly, it seems that Lady Ormonde felt under less pressure to renounce her own royalist sympathies than to disavow her Cavalier husband in communications to Lord Protector Cromwell. In the wording of her petitionary letter, she effectively writes her husband out of Ormonde Butler family history, instead justifying her claim to Irish lands through her own matrilineal descent from the family. She makes no claim to her husband’s estate; instead, she explains to Cromwell that “thar desendede to mee ane Estate of inheritanse in Irland” and requests that this is used to provide a portion for her maintenance. She contends that, like the rest of the Ormonde estate, the land of her inheritance “is now by warr and pestelanse very much depopulatede and not Like to bee without much troubill profitabill for a Longe Time.”15 Yet she implies that she alone has the will and know-how to generate an income from these lands—an income that she suggests will benefit the Cromwellian state as much as herself. She reminds Cromwell of how “great ane obligatione you have in your power to plase upon mee” and tentatively suggests that their relationship might become an alliance through which her Irish connections and experience are the reward for his benevolence. Thus committing herself and her children to long-term settlement in Cromwellian Ireland, Lady Ormonde (rhetorically at least) abandons her husband to his own resources on the continent.
Although between the lines of her letter Lady Ormonde implies her high status in Ireland and potential value as an ally, her primary rhetorical strategy nevertheless emphasizes her vulnerability. This frames her approach to the petitionary process overall: as an heiress, her settlement should not have been sequestered along with her husband’s, but she chose (or was advised) to overlook this right and instead sue only for relief.16 Throwing herself on the “generositye” of the lord protector, she stresses the precariousness of her situation as one now “in Niede of protectione and assistanse.” She foregrounds her responsibilities as a mother and insists that if her request was granted, the estate would be used only “to raise a Subsistanse for my Selfe and Chilldren.”17 Her affiliation with her royalist husband is comprehensively erased as her needs as a woman and a mother are stressed.
The extent to which this rhetorical strategy was of her own making can be seen in the contrast with two earlier letters written on her behalf by her husband when she was in Caen and he still in Ireland. With a note inscribed on the first letter by a secretary stipulating that “My lord would have my lady to write this letter to Sir Thomas fairfax to which purpose you are directed to Send it to her decyphered by a Safe express speedyly,” the letters are addressed to the parliamentarian general Lord Fairfax and his cousin, the Earl of Mulgrave, respectively, and dated March 1649. They were handwritten by the marquis, and, given the evidence of judicious revisions, he composed the letters with great care with the intention that his wife should copy them to send in her own name. In the letter to Sir Thomas Fairfax, the marquis ventriloquizes his wife’s voice, requesting the general’s intervention so that “my lords servant may receive the mony ^remaineing^ due to him to his according to the termes set downe by the Commitee at Derby house without which without which I shall bee wholy disapoynted of the meanes of subsistence designed for mee and the family left with mee.”18 By deleting “to him” and “to his,” the marquis cautiously eliminates any suggestion that the money is due to him, instead emphasizing that it is solely for the use of his wife and children. But the first draft suggests that his impulse was to stress his role in providing for his wife and children. In the revised draft his wife remains scripted into a passive voice and position, as she is required to speak as the subject of her husband’s care or “design.” In stark contrast the marchioness claims in her own letter to Nicholas that her husband left Ireland without having made adequate provision for his family, which points to her deliberate reworking of the model her husband provided.19 While he is keen to emphasize his fulfilment of duties as husband and father, she highlights his neglect, and in doing so she balances her husband’s loyal devotion to the king with her uncompromising dedication to her family.
In making her claim the Marchioness of Ormonde was fortunate to have the support and assistance of many high-ranking figures in the Commonwealth government in England and especially in Ireland. The Dublin-based commissioner of revenue, Sir Robert King, for example, wrote, “It is hard that she that was born to a great inheritance shall want bread for her children because of her Lord’s delinquency, and I believe was not practiced by her.”20 These comments suggest that he and others were willing to consider Elizabeth Ormonde’s estate and politics separately from her husband, and although the marquis should be punished by confiscation of his estate, his wife should not suffer the loss of her own inheritance. Her claim was successful, and on February 1, 1653, the commissioners of Parliament in Ireland were instructed to set aside Dunmore House, near Kilkenny, with 2,000 pounds per annum out of the lands of her own inheritance for the use of her and her children on the condition that no part of the revenue should be diverted to her husband.21
But when the schedule of lands and rents assigned for her maintenance were examined in December 1653, it became clear that the income produced fell far short of the promised 2,000 pound annuity; in some cases taxes absorbed between 50 and 80 percent of the rents.22 The Marchioness of Ormonde therefore spent the middle years of the 1650s between London and Dublin, trying to negotiate the conditions that would make her much anticipated retirement to Dunmore possible. These negotiations involved the navigation of complex political situations in London and Dublin, particularly between Cromwell and his Irish commissioners. Letters sent during what turned out to be, unhappily, a protracted stay in England from 1655 to 1657 showcase the challenges the Marchioness of Ormonde faced in her dealings with Cromwell and his government in England and Ireland. The circumstances were particularly fraught given that the Down Survey of Ireland was being taken at the time, which sought to measure all the land to be forfeited by Irish royalists, mainly but not exclusively Catholic, to facilitate its redistribution to merchant adventurers and English soldiers.23 Elizabeth Ormonde was keen to ensure that her settlement was not included with forfeited land, and her letters shed light on the challenges of reclaiming confiscated land, as well as the struggles between landowners and the adventurers, which would persist for decades.24 Her experience shows how little difference was made between Catholic and Protestant royalists in Cromwellian Ireland. That she did protect her settlement was attributable to her political connections as much as the hard work of her agent, John Burdon. The marchioness’s letters reveal her particular indebtedness to two members of the Boyle family: Katherine, Lady Ranelagh (referred to as “the Lady”), and her brother Roger, Lord Broghill, later Earl of Orrery, one of the trustees of Lady Ormonde’s estates, both of whom wielded influence with Cromwell.25 Their patronage ensured that by autumn 1657 the Marchioness of Ormonde was finally able to take her three younger children to Dunmore, having safely dispatched her elder sons to the continent.
A letter written to Burdon, in Dublin, as she was about to depart from Bristol gives rare access to her emotional turmoil during what had been probably the most difficult period of her life. She looks back on the preceding years as having “Cast greater diffeculties upon mee, then canbee well imaginede, but by thous [those], whoe has bine a wittnes what a Laborious and Sad time I have had, to suport my selfe, and Familie.” Her hopes for a new life with her youngest children in Dunmore were modest: “that God has designede mee, though I Covete Not great wealth, yet such a Competensie with a private Life, as may inabell mee to pay my depts and reward my such of My Sarvants as has Sarvede mee industerouslie and fathfullye”; Burdon is identified as “one of the prinsepall” of these. In this, her last letter written on English soil before the Restoration, the marchioness expresses her hope and belief that at last “the worst of my ^ill^ Fortune is Past.”26 Her optimism seems to have been justified, as her retirement in Dunmore brought a measure of comfort and security, and she immediately set about improving the house and estate.27 Settling into the home she inherited from her mother, it seems that Lady Ormonde expected to remain in Ireland, in her own right, for the foreseeable future.
Despite being barred from contact with her husband, the Marchioness of Ormonde maintained a clandestine correspondence with him throughout her time in Dunmore. Letters bear witness to a power struggle between the couple, showing that in her husband’s absence the marchioness assumed a new position of authority in the family based on her location in Ireland and, more important, her sole ownership, occupation, and management of what remained of the Ormonde estate. The marchioness’s assertion of power was facilitated by the material conditions of maintaining a secret correspondence with her husband, which necessitated the concealment of her identity and that of her family circle. In the letters she disguises her handwriting, addresses her husband as “Sir” (once specifically naming him as “Mr Benss” and once as “Mr James Johnson”), and signs herself as his “frind and Sarvant,” “JH.” Through this persona she refers to herself in the third person, either as the anonymous “frind” of the addressee or variously named as “Mrs Beckett,” “Mrs Rashlye,” or “Mr Dallison,” and she constructs “JH” as a disinterested agent or intermediary between her husband and herself. The reconstituted relationship with her absent husband is signified materially on the letters as she eshews the deferential space between text and signature that would be expected in a letter from wife to husband, instead pointedly placing her “JH” signature immediately underneath the text to emphasize their equality.28 This performed equality is facilitated by their physical distance and specifically the political circumstances of their separation and her residence in Ireland. In conversations between the couple that take place in the letters—mainly about their sons’ education and the prospective marriages of their eldest son and eldest daughter—the epistolary persona of male friend seems to liberate Elizabeth Ormonde from obligations of wifely deference, while the facade of the emotional distance and objectivity of a third party enables her to be less self-censoring than she might have been had she written the letters in her own name. And, as important, it seems, particularly as relations become more strained, is the fictional agent’s proximity to the Irish estates and their owner.
The license that the pseudonym of “JH” gives for free and open communication with her husband is borne out when she addresses the contentious issue of their eldest son’s marriage. Thomas, Earl of Ossory, had fallen in love with Emilia van Beverwart, daughter of Lodewyk van Nassau, governor of Sluys in the Netherlands. Ossory’s father had given his cautious approval to the match, but the agreement of his mother was needed to approve the financial settlement, and the marchioness vigorously opposed the marriage. In the first letter to her husband on the topic, she mobilizes the persona of “JH,” saying “I showede your frind the proposals of a mach for hir elldest sone,” before listing her several objections to the marriage. She writes that she “consevede just cause of exseptione as to the desent of the ladys father, which however not perhapes the less estimede in another contrye, would make it of reproach heare.” From her location in Ireland, she disparages the lineage of the van Beverwarts, perhaps because the family was an illegitimate branch of the ruling house of Orange. She also rejects a Dutch connection more broadly, comparing it unfavorably with other matches closer to home, which she claims are “more sutabell in respect of the advantages of thar allianse, then what this stranger cane bringe.”29 While her exiled husband seems to have supported Ossory’s marriage partly because of the Dutch alliances that it would bring to the king, she, writing from Ireland, explicitly favors a match closer to home. Whereas her husband places his family’s long-terms hopes with the exiled king, she locates them more practically within Commonwealth Ireland.
But more important for her is the issue of money. The marchioness was struggling to maintain her family on a much reduced estate, so in her letter she reminds her husband of the mortgage on the estate, the expense of recovering it, and the dowries needed for her two daughters. She speaks rationally and practically, letting the evidence speak for itself, and so concludes, “for which considered, as shee hopes it will bee seriouslie by hir sone, and shuch of his frinds as are ther, will shee hopes give a stope unto his rueninge of his familie, to please his fancye.”30 Adopting the voice of a disinterested intermediary, she is forthright in her rejection of the proposed marriage, allowing no room for debate, and simply listing her objections without qualification or apology. Although occasionally she betrays some anxiety about her forthrightness, particularly when it involves “displeasinge” her husband, she rarely wavers in her sense of her own authority, which emerges as strongly in her direct response to her son. In this letter she reminds Ossory of his and his father’s absence from the estate and the day-to-day business of generating an income and insists that in these circumstances only she can make an informed decision on such an important family matter.31 Her role safeguarding the Irish estates confers on her an authority above that of her absentee husband and son.
Even when she finally conceded to the match, she continued to drag her feet. With her formal approval and signature necessary for the negotiations to proceed, she simply refused to provide either, exploiting the difficulties of getting letters between Ireland and the court in exile, as well as other practical constraints in letter writing, as a way of avoiding charges of obstinacy or neglect. Her husband was evidently attuned to these manipulations, as several months into the discussions and during the formal negotiations in The Hague in May 1659, she wrote to “vindecate” herself. The letter she received from her husband admonishing her is not extant, but her response from May 19, 1659—four months to the day since her last extant letter—protests against any “misconstroctione” of her motives, explaining that she was “not at this time soe well in hir health as to write hir selfe by reson of a Cough that has troubled hir of Late.” Elizabeth Ormonde’s resentment of her husband and son’s persistence is thinly veiled, the defense unconvincing, and an apology unforthcoming. Moreover, when she insists that she “never as yet did declyne the owninge and payinge of a respect where and obligation where it was soe much dew,” the revision of her text reveals the reluctance with which she complies with her husband’s wishes. This is not simply a “respect”; it is also an “obligation,” and the speed with which she adds the word “obligation” (it is an immediate addition rather than a later insertion) lays bare the resentment that she barely attempts to conceal.32 Overall, the letters betray her frustration that her expertise in estate matters is not fully recognized by her husband and son and also show how she exploits her Irish-based authority to champion her new status over the displaced men in her family.
Letters written in the wake of the Restoration of Charles II in May 1660 reflect how family dynamics shifted once again, as Elizabeth Ormonde prepared to leave Ireland to be reunited with her husband in London. The new balance of power is registered materially on the first letter she writes to her newly “avowede” husband, as she offers due deference in the significant space created by his “most affectionat wife.” The marchioness professes her joy that the “Bondage under which the three kingdoms as well as my selfe has sufferede, shouldbee now by [God’s] mercye removede” and describes the Restoration as “such a motive of admiratione and joy to all, and perticularlie to mee, as is unexpresabell.” Yet while bringing an end to the “Bondage” she has endured is undoubtedly a cause for celebration, since it guarantees a massive improvement in her family’s fortunes, the Restoration leads to her displacement from the position of authority she enjoyed, as the locus of Ormonde Butler power and authority moves away from Ireland. As her family’s prospects relocate to her husband and the restored court, Elizabeth Ormonde begins to rewrite recent history. First, she reimagines her years in Dunmore as no longer a period of relative contentment but as an experience of enslavement. She depicts herself as having been a co-participant in an exile experience that she had in fact prudently avoided. She also revises the period of the couple’s estrangement as an “8 yeares absense,” but representing herself, not her husband, as having been away. Making significant deletions in her letter (she cancels “from you” after mentioning her “absense”), the marchioness suggests that her separation was not just from her husband but from the king and his court also, her suffering compounded by her displacement from the royalist community. Celebrating “our longe wisht for blessinge of the kings restoratione at length establishede to uss,” she attempts to reintegrate with the royalist community. She professes her “dewtye for your Master” and admits to her husband that her “reveranse” “forbides the presomtione of anye congratulorye addrese,” beseeching the marquis to be “soe just to mee as to let hime know untell I may have the honner to kiss his hands.”33 The marchioness thus recognizes that she is dependent on her husband to facilitate her reentry to the court.
The flurry of letters sent to her husband as Elizabeth Ormonde made preparations to join the court on its triumphant return to London expresses a combination of exhilaration, disorientation, and anxiety as she contemplates the seismic changes that the Restoration will bring to her, her family, and the Three Kingdoms. The last letter sent to her husband just before she leaves Dublin brings these different emotions together, and what particularly emerges is her trepidation about facing the hubbub of London after the relative peace and quiet of Dunmore, and she shares her preference for lodgings in Chelsea or Richmond, where she would be away from “the Hurye of pepell, and the Noysomnes of that great Towne.”34 She insists that her eldest son and his new wife find their own home because “the troubell of haveinge a Nothar Familie in My House is; from Comminge from a retyrede life a troubill I cannot undertake.”35 Morbid fears sit alongside social unease as the marchioness shares her concerns over the possibility of attempts against the life of the king or the marquis himself.36 For Elizabeth Ormonde, it seems, relocating to London is neither easy nor desired; Ireland is where she is most at home.
Letters to her husband are mainly concerned with the distribution of patronage, and Elizabeth Ormonde takes upon herself the responsibility for recommending clients in Ireland to her husband in the restored court. One of these letters of recommendation stands out for the way it manifests materially the excited chaos of this period. The main body of the letter recommends one Captain Power; then a postscript acknowledges correspondence received but overlooked in the main body of the letter, “The good Neuse haueinge made mee allmost as wilde, as it has done many wisser persons”; then she writes, “I pray turne the leafe,” and inserts a new leaf on which a recommendation is made for a second man, Walter Plunkett; yet another postscript is then added after the letter has been folded and sealed.37 The letter showcases the marchioness’s status at the helm of a wide-ranging Ireland-based patronage network, indicating that she can barely keep up with the demands of her new role mediating between clients in Ireland and her husband at court.
The Marchioness of Ormonde invariably cites her clients’ loyalty to her husband and the king, highlighting their role in maintaining the king’s interests in Ireland. She implies that she is best equipped to identify those Irish men who should be rewarded for loyal service. Often she brings favored clients to her husband’s notice as bearers of her letters, writing of one hopeful gentleman that she “couldnot oblidge hime more then by giveinge hime the oppertunitie of it, have chossene hime to bee the mesenger of this.” She also advocates for this client not only because he has proven himself loyal to the king and to Ormonde but also because he “has in your absense, and my nesesities, bine frindlie to mee.” Among those recommended to her husband’s service is her “ould Sarvant,” John Burdon, “whoe is Now as Sober and abbell a Secretarye as anye that I doe beleve you Cane light upon and willbee very ussfull to you upon Sondrie ocations.”38 In a list of remembrances that she intended to be delivered to her husband by her close friend, Anne Hume, the marchioness asks that her husband “show a respect unto my Lady of R[anelagh] upon the account of her kindness to me.”39 Indeed, as she anticipated the formal announcement of the king’s Restoration, her first priority was to acknowledge the network of female friends who had supported and sustained her during the previous decade, directing her husband (via an agent, Stephen Smith) to visit the Dowager Lady Devonshire, the Lady Marchioness of Dorchester, Lady Strafford, the Dowager Lady of Peterborough, the Dowager Lady Derby, Lady Ranelagh, Lady Anne Savile, and the Countess of Dysart, all women whom she identifies as being “soe perticularlie kind and Frindlie to Mee.”40 All these women are based in England, and all her important clients she sends to London: this indicates her sense that, for the moment at least, Ormonde Butler family interests lie in England.
While the Marchioness of Ormonde exploits her husband’s newfound power in the revived court, she apologizes for making use of it and also proposes a novel way of dealing with the number of requests for patronage that she receives. In the memorandum to Hume, she asks for her husband to be acquainted that “such as recommendations as comes from mee, in the behalfe of Persons done rathar out of Complianse then respect, shallbee subscribed with the the leaving out of the ^leter^ E, at the Ende of the word ormond.”41 The spelling of the Ormonde title was flexible—her husband used both spellings, while she routinely adopted the (feminine) terminal “e”—and the marchioness exploits this flexibility to develop a secret code for communications with her husband: through this mechanism she later cues the marquis that a (halfhearted) recommendation for one Mr. Burneston was written under duress.42 With the rudimentary code allowing the marchioness to maintain strict control over the family’s distribution of patronage while at the same time placating hopeful clients, she is shown to be highly attuned to the precarious and sensitive political situation in Ireland. Although Elizabeth Ormonde ultimately defers to her husband’s judgment when the people arrive at court, she does the initial filtering of their Irish client base. Her Irish-based patronage is key to putting Ireland firmly on her husband’s political agenda in the restored court, but it is entirely dependent on her husband’s proximity to the king. The couple’s political position at the Restoration is thus dual-centered, with the marquis overseeing critical developments in the English capital and the marchioness doing the same in Ireland.
The Duchess of Ormonde’s experiences during the Interregnum resonated for the rest of her life. Whether due to habit, interest, or expertise, from thenceforth she assumed primary responsibility for overseeing the management of the couple’s sprawling Irish estates.43 Her letters also demonstrate her lasting emotional and material investment in Dunmore House, which she continued to improve; at her insistence Dunmore provided the location for the marriage, in October 1662, of her younger daughter, Mary, to the grandson of the Dowager Lady Devonshire, one of the women who supported her during the Interregnum.44 Elizabeth Ormonde continued to remember and reward those who had helped her during her husband’s exile. As late as April 1672 she extended the lease of the son of an old servant who had been “Frindlie to mee, in Times when Few appiered Soe.” And in spring 1666 she repaid the many favors of Lady Ranelagh by becoming her advocate following the contentious separation from her husband.45 The duchess also preserved a warm friendship with Sir Edward Nicholas, who had supported her financially during her time in Caen.46 Other relationships that trace their origins to the Interregnum did not fare so well. Her friendship with Ranelagh’s brother, the Earl of Orrery (formerly Lord Broghill), soured to such an extent that in March 1669 she describes him as “the most false and ingratfull Person ^Man^ livinge” after he conspired with her husband’s enemies at court to have him removed from the lord lieutenancy.47 She also never warmed to her daughter-in-law, Lady Ossory, whom she often criticized for failing to meet her high standards of conduct, going so far as dismissing her as a “healples wife” when Ossory was serving as lord deputy after his father was summoned to the court to answer charges of misconduct.48 Letters written during the couple’s extended stay in England following the duke’s dismissal from office once again show the duchess’s abiding wish to return to Ireland, a place that for her continued to represent security, stability, and safety for her and her family.
The enduring legacy of the Interregnum for the Duchess of Ormonde might be found in the history of the vault in which she was buried in Westminster Abbey.49 Now known as the Ormond vault, it was formerly called Cromwell’s or Oliver’s vault because this was where the lord protector had been buried before his body was exhumed for a posthumous execution at Tyburn in January 1661. That the duchess and her family came to occupy Cromwell’s grave shows just how much life had changed for her family since the Interregnum. But as much of an honor as it was for the Duchess of Ormonde to be buried alongside English royalty in Westminster Abbey, it is unlikely to have been the resting place she had planned for herself. She had prepared Dunmore for her dowager house, and in her last letter written within weeks of her sudden death in July 1684 she shared plans for the couple’s imminent return to Ireland.50 This is a fitting end to a correspondence that, despite being overwhelmingly written in England, was always directed, literally and figuratively, across the Irish Sea to her home in Ireland.
1. My edition of The Letters of the First Duchess of Ormonde will be published with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. For an assessment of the Duchess of Ormonde’s significance in her family, see Eleanor O’Keeffe, “The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, First Duke of Ormonde, 1658–1688” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2000).
2. Timothy Wilks, Of Neighing Coursers and Trumpets Shrill: A Life of Richard, 1st Lord Dingwall and Earl of Desmond (c. 1570–1628) (London: Lucas, 2012).
3. This account is indebted to David Edwards, “The Poisoned Chalice: The Ormond Inheritance, Sectarian Division and the Emergence of James Butler, 1614–1642,” in The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745, ed. Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 58–64.
4. Elizabeth Ormonde to James, Marquis of Ormonde, May 11, 1660, Dunmore, MS 30, Carte Papers, Bodleian Library (Bodl.), Oxford, fol. 645.
5. Elizabeth Ormonde to Capt. George Mathew, September 13, 1673, MS 2,503, Ormond Papers, National Library of Ireland (NLI), Dublin, no. 122; Elizabeth Ormonde to John Burdon, June 24, 1658, Dunmore, MS 2,323, Ormond Papers, NLI, p. 305, no. 1288.
6. Elizabeth Ormonde to James, Marquis of Ormonde, June 4, 1660, Dunmore, MS 214, Carte Papers, Bodl., fols. 227–29.
7. E. Ormonde to James, Duke of Ormonde, June 18, 1669, Kilkenny, MS 243, Carte Papers, Bodl., fols. 24–25.
8. See, for example, Brian FitzGerald, The Anglo-Irish: Three Representative Types: Cork, Ormonde, Swift, 1602–1745 (London: Staples, 1952).
9. Raymond Gillespie, “The Religion of the First Duke of Ormond,” in Barnard and Fenlon, Dukes of Ormonde, 101–14.
10. On the Irish exile community, see Mark R. F. Williams, The King’s Irishmen: The Irish in the Exiled Court of Charles II, 1649–1660 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014).
11. E. Ormonde to Sir Edward Nicholas, January 19, 1650/51, MS 2,534, Egerton Manuscripts, British Library (BL), London, fol. 44 (emphasis added).
12. E. Ormonde to Nicholas, January 19, 1650/51, BL.
13. E. Ormonde to Nicholas, January 19, 1650/51, BL.
14. E. Ormonde to Lord Protector Cromwell, May 2, 1652, Caen, MS 138, Society of Antiquaries, London.
15. E. Ormonde to Cromwell, May 2, 1652, Society of Antiquaries.
16. Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), 251.
17. E. Ormonde to Cromwell, May 2, 1652, Society of Antiquaries.
18. E. Ormonde to Sir Thomas Fairfax, March 24, 1648/49, MS 24, Carte Papers, Bodl., fol. 202.
19. E. Ormonde to Nicholas, January 19, 1650/51, BL.
20. Sir Robert King to William Basil, October 6, 1652, in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Ormonde, n.s., 8 vols. (London, 1902–20), 1:266.
21. See Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts, 2:373–75. See also Conleth Manning, “The 1653 Survey of the Lands Granted to the Countess of Ormond in Co. Kilkenny,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 129 (1999): 40–66.
22. This account is drawn from Winifred Gardner (Lady Burghclere), The Life of James, First Duke of Ormonde, 1610–1688, 2 vols. (London: Murray, 1912), 1:438, where more details can be found. Official documents relating to E. Ormonde’s settlement can be found in MSS 2499–2501, Ormond Papers, NLI.
23. See the Down Survey of Ireland database, http://downsurvey.tcd.ie.
24. E. Ormonde to John Burdon, September 21, 1655, [London], MS 2,321, Ormond Papers, NLI, p. 225, no. 1,147.
25. E. Ormonde to John Burdon, August 8, 1657, MS 2,322, Ormond Papers, NLI, p. 385, no. 1,236.
26. E. Ormonde to Burdon, September 16, 1657, [Bristol], MS 2,322, Ormond Papers, NLI, p. 413, no. 1,240.
27. Jane Fenlon, “The Duchess of Ormonde’s House at Dunmore, County Kilkenny,” in Kilkenny: Studies in Honour of Margaret M. Phelan, ed. John Kirwan (Kilkenny: Kilkenny Archaeological Society, 1997), 79–87.
28. Jonathan Gibson, “Significant Space in Manuscript Letters,” Seventeenth Century 12, no. 1 (1997): 1–10.
29. E. Ormonde to James, Marquis of Ormonde, November 26, 1658, [Dunmore], MS 213, Carte Papers, Bodl., fols. 168–69.
30. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, November 26, 1658, Bodl.
31. E. Ormonde to Thomas, Earl of Ossory, [October 1658], [Dunmore], MS 213, Carte Papers, Bodl., fol. 449.
32. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, May 19, 1659, [Dunmore], MS 213, Carte Papers, Bodl., fols. 244–45.
33. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, May 11, 1660, Bodl.
34. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, June 4, 1660, Bodl.
35. E. Ormonde to [Anne] Hume, [May 1660], MS 214, Carte Papers, Bodl., fols. 221–22.
36. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, June 4, 1660, Bodl.
37. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, May 21, 1660, Dublin, MS 214, Carte Papers, Bodl., fols. 87–88.
38. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, May 21, 1660, Bodl.
39. E. Ormonde to Hume, [May 1660], Bodl.
40. E. Ormonde to Stephen Smith, May 7, 1660, MS 2,324, Ormond Papers, NLI, p. 199, no. 1,334.
41. E. Ormonde to Hume, [May 1660], Bodl.
42. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, May 20, 1660, Dublin, MS 2,324, Ormond Papers, NLI, p. 235, no. 1,339.
43. See her correspondence to the couple’s estate manager, Capt. George Mathew, MS 2,503, Ormond Papers, NLI, nos. 1–130.
44. James, Duke of Ormonde, to the Earl of Devonshire, October 20, 1662, Dublin, MS 199, Carte Papers, Bodl., fol. 117.
45. E. Ormonde to Mathew, April 20, 1672, NLI; Katherine, Lady Ranelagh, to E. Ormonde, [April 1666], MS 217, Carte Papers, Bodl., fols. 452–53; Ranelagh to E. Ormonde, March 2, [1666], MS 217, Carte Papers, Bodl., fols. 454–456.
46. See, for example, E. Ormonde to Sir Edward Nicholas, January 5, 1663/64, MS 2,538, Egerton Manuscripts, BL, fol. 239.
47. E. Ormonde to Mathew, March 9, 1668/69, MS 2,503, Ormond Papers, NLI, no. 15.
48. E. Ormonde to J. Ormonde, June 20, 1669, Kilkenny, MS 243, Carte Papers, Bodl., fol. 26.
49. I am very grateful to Ann-Maria Walsh for this information.
50. E. Ormonde to Richard, Earl of Arran, July 5, 1684, Hampton Court, London, MS 2,439, Ormond Papers, NLI, p. 119, no. 8,491.