Theobald Butler (solicitor-general)

[2] He was a well-known "character" who regularly frequented the taverns of Dublin, especially in the rather unsavoury district called "Hell", adjoining Christ Church Cathedral.

He could be quarrelsome when drunk, and in 1693 was reprimanded for assaulting another barrister, Nicholas Fitzgerald, whom he accused, on no apparent evidence, of trying to murder him, after an all-night drinking session in Waterford.

He was briefly Third Serjeant and Solicitor General, Recorder of Clonmel, second justice of the Palatine Court of Tipperary, and a Commissioner of the Revenue, and he sat on a Commission to examine the validity of Royal Charters.

[2] After the downfall of James II's cause, Butler played a key role in drawing up the civil articles of the Treaty of Limerick, which were intended as a permanent settlement of Ireland's political problems; he was assisted by two other prominent Catholic barristers, John Browne and Garrett Dillon.

[3] While he has been criticised for his alleged lack of attention to points of detail, in fact, the terms which he obtained were remarkably generous to the defeated side, and are a tribute to his political and legal skills.

Catholic landowners (and those Protestants who had supported the Jacobite cause) who declared their loyalty to King William III were not to suffer any penalties, and would retain their lands and the right to keep and bear arms.

Against that, Butler's speech to the Commons in 1703 is that of an open and passionate Roman Catholic (his eldest son James did conform to the Established Church, despite claims by informers to the contrary).

[6] As the eighteenth century began, the legal position of Roman Catholics steadily worsened, and in 1703 a Bill "to prevent the further growth of Popery" was introduced in the House of Commons.

[2] One of the few dissenting voices, speaking for those embittered Catholics who had lost everything under the new regime, said that he deserved a place in Purgatory, along with the notably accommodating judge Denis Daly, who had also recently died.

[1] They had at least five sons- James, John (the owner of Ballymount House in South Dublin), Theobald, Jordan and Henry- and a daughter Frances, who married her cousin Thomas Butler, 6th Baron Cahir.