James Arthur Norman Butler, 6th Marquess of Ormonde, CVO, MC (25 April 1893 – 1971), was a British peer, Army Officer and Veteran of the First and Second World Wars.
James Arthur Norman Butler was born on 25 April 1893 at the home of his paternal grandmother Frances, Dowager Marchioness of Ormonde at 21 Park Lane, London.
Lord Arthur Senior had a military background, having served as a British Army Officer in the 1st Life Guards.
Upon his older brother's marriage to Lady Elizabeth Grosvenor in 1876, it seemed likely that the Third Marquess would have a son who would supplant Lord Arthur Senior as heir to the family titles and estates.
The Ormondes also owned several hundred acres of land in Kent, England, which included the living at the Parish of Ulcombe, worth some £500 in the late 1800s.
His brother's lack of male heir after ten years of marriage may have spurned Lord Arthur Senior to marry and start a family of his own, given the increasingly liklihood that he and any sons he may father would be next in time to inherate the Ormonde titles and estates.
He made a large fortune in the post-war years, and was a business associate of the Vanderbilt family and Thomas Edison, and a friend of Robert Todd Lincoln.
From 1895 to 1898 they leased Sandleford Priory, near Newbury,[1][2] and were recorded as living at Willesley House near Crankbrook, Kent in the 1901 Census.
This Census also recorded that their household employed a large staff of domestic servants, including a Governess, Butler, Cook, two Footmen, three Housemaids, a Kitchen Maid, and a Nurse.
The 1939 England and Wales Registers records Arthur as living at Nobscrook Farm with his wife Jesse and their two daughters, with a staff of three including a Cook, Housemaid and Domestic Children's Nurse.
[13] The unexpected death of his nephew Anthony, Viscount Thurles, in 1940 made Arthur the heir presumptive to his brother George, Lord Ormonde.
Upon his accession as Lord Ormonde, he inherited a significantly reduced estate compared to the wealth and income which his Uncle and Brother had enjoyed.
[17] The actual sale had already been concluded by Arthur's brother George prior to his death, but this was later found to have lacked the necessary judicial approvals.
Gennings was sold in 1955, and in the same year Arthur and his wife Jesse (now Marquess and Marchioness of Ormonde) returned to Berkshire, where they purchased Cantley House in Wokingham.
[19] Arthur's daughter Lady Martha Ponsonby also quoted as praising her father for his efforts to keep the roof of such a large structure maintained, and noting that the Castle was empty when her father came into his inheritance in 1949, and that the decision to undertake the sale was made in agreement with Arthur's cousin and eventual successor Charles Butler.
In 1943, she joined the WRNS, and was selected to go to Stanmore, where she worked with the German code-breaking group that operated the Enigma Machines during the Second World War.
She was divorced from Peter Heaton in 1952, and lived in Greece in the late 1950s, before settling in La Garde-Freinet in Provence, 15 kilometres north of Saint-Tropez.
[24] Arthur and Jesse's younger daughter, Lady Martha Butler worked as a nurse during World War II.
Ashley had served in the Coldstream Guards in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War, and was stationed in Bermuda during the late 1940s.