[1] By 1324 Buttevant friary consisted of a community of Irish and Anglo-Norman friars and was sufficiently important to maintain its own studium, or house of studies.

In the medieval burgage of Buttevant, the friary porch was the place to make legal agreements, renew or grant leases on Lady Day and Michelmas, swear fealty, do homage and contract marriage.

In 1570, James de Barry, 4th Viscount Buttevant, received a lease, to hold for twenty-one years, of "the site of the house of the friars at Killnamullagh, alias Buttevante, Co. Cork, with its appurtenances at an annual rent of 16 shillings and 8 pence".

The Brussels manuscript mentions that in 1615 the large church of the friary "still remains, roofed with wooden tiles, and in it are many of the tombs of the nobility.

Minorum compiled between 1626 and 1629 by Father Francis Matthews, is preserved in the archive of the Irish Franciscan Convent of St. Isidore in Rome.

It recounts that "in the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England, the friars were at times expelled from thence; some were captured and imprisoned.

In the ensuing war in Munster, the Protestant commander, Murrough O'Brien, Earl of Inchiquin, assembled his English Parliamentarian army in Buttevant and burned the friary church.

An obituary list of the Clergy of the Diocese of Cloyne, compiled from memory by Bishop William Coppinger (1791–1830), dating from c. 1820, contains the names of those who must have been the last members of the Franciscan community at Buttevant Friary.

Unfortunately the list was not written in chronological succession which makes it almost impossible to establish the exact dates of death of the four Franciscan friars mentioned in it.

Samuel Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) notes the following of the Franciscan Friary at Buttevant: " The ruins of the abbey are finely situated on the steep bank of the river Awbeg, and consist chiefly of the walls of the nave, chancel, and some portions of the domestic buildings; the upper part of the central tower, supported on arches of light and graceful elevation, fell down in 1814; the tomb of the founder, David de Barry, is supposed to be in the centre of the chancel, but is marked only by some broken stones which appear to have formed an enclosure.