The family descended from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II in 1177.

It was once believed that his parents had married about 1520, but this is now known to be impossible as, in 1521-2, his father was briefly betrothed to his English cousin Anne Boleyn.

Thomas, the "son of an Irish Earl", and Elizabeth, the "illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII", shared a common experience: neither was well-treated by the other young nobles at court.

They were distant (4th) cousins through her mother, Anne Boleyn, whose paternal grandmother, Lady Margaret Butler, was a daughter of the 7th Earl (open the collapsed family tree below).

On 28 October 1546, when Butler was 15, his father, the 9th Earl of Ormond died in London after having been poisoned during a banquet at Ely House,[12] probably at the instigation of Anthony St Leger, who was Lord Deputy of Ireland and a political opponent.

[13] On 10 September 1547 during the Rough Wooing he served at the Battle of Pinkie under Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset against the Scots.

There were unfounded rumours that Elizabeth was the mother, something which was particularly impossible at the time of Piers's birth when the Princess was away from court, imprisoned, then under house arrest, and frequent public questioning for her alleged complicity in the Wyatt Rebellion.

[24] However, only a bit more than a month after her death on 2 January 1565,[25] on 8 February 1565, the two sides fought the private Battle of Affane, in which her husband Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond was taken prisoner by the Ormond faction[26] after her son Edmund had shot him into the hip with his pistol.

That meant that Edmund ceased to be Ormond's heir presumptive and the next brother, John Butler of Kilcash, took his place.

James fitz Maurice FitzGerald surrendered on 23 February 1573 and Gerald followed in September ending the first Desmond rebellion.

The second Desmond Rebellion (1579–1583) was triggered by the landing of James fitz Maurice FitzGerald at Dingle On 17 June 1579.

Ormond was a Protestant belonging to the Church of Ireland[34] and threw his great influence on the side of Queen Elizabeth I and her ministers in their efforts to crush the rebels, although he was motivated as much by factional rivalry with the Desmond dynasty as by religion.

At the age of 51, having been freed by the death of his estranged first wife on 1 September 1582, Ormond remarried Elizabeth Sheffield on 9 November in London.

Thomas and Elizabeth had three children: In 1580 Ormond improved Kilkenny Castle by building the great gallery.

Between April 1600 and June 1600 he was held captive by Owny MacRory O'More who had invaded Munster with Irish forces from Leinster.

The 10th Earl of Ormond, as an old blind man, celebrated Christmas with his family at Carrick Castle.

He sighed and said "My family shall be much oppressed and brought very low, but by this boy it shall be restored again and in his time be in greater splendour than ever it has been".

[48] The tenth Lord Ormond died on 22 November 1614 at Carrick[49] and was buried at St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny.

As the Earl died without legally recognised male issue, and his younger brother Edmund was attainted, the Earldom reverted in the male line, to the Kilcash cadet branch, which had started with the third brother John Butler of Kilcash and whose living representative was John's son Walter.