Chapter XIX: Part 19

Between these two great statesmen Theobald Walter, the eldest brother of the archbishop, rose and flourished. Theobald is found in the _Liber Niger_ (c. 1166) as holding Amounderness by the service of one knight. In 1185 he went over sea to Waterford with John the king's son, the freight of the harness sent after him being charged in the Pipe Roll. Clad in that harness he led the men of Cork when Dermot MacCarthy, prince of Desmond, was put to the sword, John rewarding his services with lands in Limerick and with the important fief of Arklow in the vale of Avoca, where he made his Irish seat and founded an abbey. Returning to England he accompanied his uncle Randulf to France, both witnessing a charter delivered by the king at Chinon when near to death. Soon afterwards, Theobald Walter was given by John that hereditary office of butler to the lord of Ireland, which makes a surname for his descendants, styling himself _pincerna_ when he attests John's charter to Dublin on the 15th of May 1192. J. Horace Round has pointed out that he also took a fresh seal, the inscription of which calls him Theobald Walter, Butler of Ireland, and henceforward he is sometimes surnamed Butler (_le Botiller_). When John went abroad in 1192, Theobald was given the charge of Lancaster castle, but in 1194 he was forced to surrender to his brother Hubert, who summoned it in King Richard's name. Making his peace through Hubert's influence, he was sheriff of Lancashire for King Richard, who regranted to him all Amounderness. His fortunes turned with the king's death. The new sovereign, treating his surrender of the castle as treachery, took the shrievalty from him, disseised him of Amounderness and sold his cantreds of Limerick land to William de Braose. But the great archbishop soon found means to bring his brother back to favour, and on the 2nd of January 1201-2 Amounderness, by writ of the king, is to be restored to Theobald Walter, _dilecto et fideli nostra_, Within a year or two Theobald left England to end his days upon his Arklow fief, busying himself with religious foundations at Wotheney in Limerick, at Arklow and at Nenagh. At Wotheney he is said to have been buried shortly before the 12th of February 1205-6, when an entry in the Close Roll is concerned with his widow. This widow, Maude, daughter of Robert le Vavasor of Denton, was given up to her father, who, buying the right of marrying her at a price of 1200 marks and two palfreys, gave her to Fulk fitz-Warine. Theobald, the son and heir of Theobald and Maude, a child of six years old, was likewise taken into the keeping of his grandfather Robert, but letters from the king, dated the 2nd of March 1205-6, told Robert, "as he loved his body," to surrender the heir at once to Gilbert fitz-Reinfrid, the baron of Kendal.

Adding to its possessions by marriages the house advanced itself among the nobility of Ireland. On the 1st of September 1315, its chief, Edmund Walter _alias_ Edmund the Butler, for services against the Scottish raiders and Ulster rebels, had a charter of the castle and manors of Carrick, Macgriffyn and Roscrea to hold to him and his heirs _sub nomine et honore comitis de Karryk_. This charter, however, while apparently creating an earldom, failed, as Mr Round has explained, to make his issue earls of Carrick. But James, the son and heir of Edmund, having married in 1327 Eleanor de Bohun, daughter of Humfrey, [v.04 p.0880] earl of Hereford and Essex, high constable of England, by a daughter of Edward I., was created an Irish earl on the 2nd of November 1328, with the title of Ormonde.

From the early years of the 14th century the Ormonde earls, generation by generation, were called to the chief government of Ireland as lords-keeper, lords-lieutenant, deputies or lords-justices, and unlike their hereditary enemies the Geraldines they kept a tradition of loyalty to the English crown and to English custom. Their history is full of warring with the native Irish, and as the sun stood still upon Gibeon, even so, we are told, it rested over the red bog of Athy while James the White Earl was staying the wild O'Mores. More than one of the earls of Ormonde had the name of a scholar, while of the 6th earl, master of every European tongue and ambassador to many courts, Edward IV. is said to have declared that were good breeding and liberal qualities lost to the world they might be found again in John, earl of Ormonde. The earls were often absent from Ireland on errands of war or peace. James, the 5th earl, had the English earldom of Wiltshire given him in 1449 for his Lancastrian zeal. He fought at St Albans in 1455, casting his harness into a ditch as he fled the field, and he led a wing at Wakefield. His stall plate as a knight of the Garter is still in St George's chapel. Defeated with the earl of Pembroke at Mortimer's Cross and taken prisoner after Towton, his fate is uncertain, but rumour said that he was beheaded at Newcastle, and a letter addressed to John Paston about May 1461 sends tidings that "the Erle of Wylchir is hed is sette on London Brigge."

To his time belongs a document illustrating a curious tradition of the Butlers. His petition to parliament when he was conveying Buckinghamshire lands to the hospital of St Thomas of Acres in London, recites that he does so "in worship of that glorious martyr St Thomas, sometime archbishop of Canterbury, of whose blood the said earl of Wiltshire, his father and many of his ancestors are lineally descended." But the pedigrees in which genealogists have sought to make this descent definite will not bear investigation. The Wiltshire earldom died with him and the Irish earldom was for a time forfeited, his two brothers, John and Thomas, sharing his attainder. John was restored in blood by Edward IV.; and Thomas, the 7th earl, summoned to the English parliament in 1495 as Lord Rochford, a title taken from a Bohun manor in Essex, saw the statute of attainder annulled by Henry VII.'s first parliament. He died without male issue in 1515. Of his two daughters and co-heirs Anne was married to Sir James St. Leger, and Margaret to Sir William Boleyn of Blickling, by whom she was mother of Sir James and Sir Thomas Boleyn. The latter, the father of Anne Boleyn, was created earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde in 1529.

In Ireland the heir male of the Ormonde earls, Sir Piers Butler--"red Piers"--assumed the earldom of Ormonde in 1515 and seized upon the Irish estates. Being a good ally against the rebel Irish, the government temporized with his claim. He was an Irishman born, allied to the wild Irish chieftains by his mother, a daughter of the MacMorrogh Kavanagh; the earldom had been long in the male line; all Irish sentiment was against the feudal custom which would take it out of the family, and the two co-heirs were widows of English knights. In 1522, styled "Sir Piers Butler pretending himself to be earl of Ormonde," he was made chief governor of Ireland as lord deputy, and on the 23rd of February 1527/8, following an agreement with the co-heirs of the 7th earl, whereby the earldom of Ormonde was declared to be at the king's disposal, he was created earl of Ossory. But the Irish estates, declared forfeit to the crown in 1536 under the Act of Absentees, were granted to him as "earl of Ossory and Ormonde." Although the Boleyn earl of Ormonde and Wiltshire was still alive, there can be no doubt that Piers Butler had a patent of the Ormonde earldom about the 22nd of February 1537/8, from which date his successors must reckon their peerage. His son and heir, James the Lame, who had been created Viscount Thurles on the 2nd of January 1535/6, obtained an act of parliament in 1543/4 which, confirming the grant to his father of the earldom, gave him the old "pre-eminence" of the ancient earldom of 1328.

Earl James was poisoned at a supper in Ely House in 1546, and Thomas the Black Earl, his son and heir, was brought up at the English court, professing the reformed religion. His sympathies were with the Irish, although he stood staunchly for law and order, and for the great part of his life he was wrestling with rebellion. His lands having been harried by hit hereditary enemies the Desmond Geraldines, Elizabeth gave him his revenge by appointing him in 1580 military governor of Munster, with a commission to "banish and vanquish these cankered Desmonds," then in open rebellion. In three months, by his own account, he had put to the sword 46 captains, 800 notorious traitors and 4000 others, and, after four years' fighting, Gerald, earl of Desmond, a price on his head, was taken and killed. Dying in 1614 without lawful issue, Thomas was succeeded by his nephew Walter of Kilcash, who had fought beside him against the Burkes and O'Mores. But Sir Robert Preston, afterwards created earl of Desmond, claimed a great part of the Ormonde lands in right of his wife, the Black Earl's daughter and heir. In spite of the loyal services of Earl Walter, King James supported the claimant, and the earl, refusing to submit to a royal award, was thrown into gaol, where he lay for eight years in great poverty, his rents being cut off. Although liberated in 1625 he was not acknowledged heir to his uncle's estates until 1630. His son, Viscount Thurles, being drowned on a passage to England, a grandson succeeded him.

This grandson, James Butler, is perhaps the most famous of the long line of Ormondes. By his marriage with his cousin Elizabeth Preston, the Ormonde titles were once more united with all the Ormonde estates. A loyal soldier and statesman, he commanded for the king in Ireland, where he was between the two fires of Catholic rebels and Protestant parliamentarians. In Ireland he stayed long enough to proclaim Charles II. in 1649, but defeated at Rathmines, his garrisons broken by Cromwell, he quitted the country at the end of 1650. At the Restoration he was appointed lord-lieutenant, his estates having been restored to him with the addition of the county palatine of Tipperary, taken by James I. from his grandfather. In 1632 he had been created a marquess. The English earldom of Brecknock was added in 1660 and an Irish dukedom of Ormonde in the following year. In 1682 he had a patent for an English dukedom with the same title. Buckingham's intrigues deprived him for seven years of his lord-lieutenancy, and a desperate attempt was made upon his life in 1670, when a company of ruffians dragged him from his coach in St James's Street and sought to hurry him to the gallows at Tyburn. His son's threat that, if harm befell his father he would pistol Buckingham, even if he were behind the king's chair, may have saved him from assassination. At the accession of James II. he was once more taken from active employment, and "Barzillai, crowned with honour and with years" died at his Dorsetshire house in 1688. He had seen his great-great-uncle the Black Earl, who was born in 1532, and a great-grandson was playing beside him a few hours before his death. His brave son Ossory, "the eldest hope with every grace adorned," died eight years before him, and he was succeeded by a grandson James, the second duke of Ormonde, who, a recognized leader of the London Jacobites, was attainted in 1715, his honours and estates being forfeited. The duke lived thirty years in exile, chiefly at Avignon, and died in the rebellion year of 1745 without surviving issue. His younger brother Charles, whom King William had created Lord Butler of Weston in the English peerage and earl of Arran in the Irish, was allowed to purchase the Ormonde estates. On the earl's death without issue in 1758 the estates were enjoyed by a sister, passing in 1760, by settlement of the earl of Arran, to John Butler of Kilcash, descendant of a younger brother of the first duke. John dying six years later was succeeded by Walter Butler, a first cousin, whose son John, heir-male of the line of Ormonde, became earl of Ormonde and Ossory and Viscount Thurles in 1791, the Irish parliament reversing the attainder of 1715. Walter, son and heir of the restored earl, was given an English peerage as Lord Butler of Llanthony (1801) and an Irish marquessate of Ormonde (1816), titles that died with him. This Lord Ormonde in 1810 [v.04 p.0881] sold to the crown for the great sum of £216,000 his ancestral right to the prisage of wines in Ireland. For his brother and heir, created Lord Ormonde of Llahthony at the coronation of George IV., the Irish marquessate was revived in 1825 and descended in the direct line.

The earls of Carrick (Ireland 1748), Viscounts Ikerrin (Ireland 1629), claim descent from a brother of the first Ormonde earl, while the viscounts Mountgarret (Ireland 1550) spring from a younger son of Piers, the Red Earl of Ossory. The barony of Caher (Ireland 1543), created for Sir Thomas Butler of Chaier or Caher-down-Eske, a descendant in an illegitimate branch of the Butlers, fell into abeyance among heirs general on the death of the 2nd baron in 1560. It was again created, after the surrender of their rights by the heirs general, in 1583 for Sir Theobald Butler (d. 1596), and became extinct in 1858 on the death of Richard Butler, 13th baron and 2nd viscount Caher, and second earl of Glengall. Buttler von Clonebough, _genannt_ Haimhausen, count of the Holy Roman Empire, descends from the 3rd earl of Ormonde, the imperial title having been revived in 1681 in memory of the services of a kinsman, Walter, Count Butler (d. 1634), the dragoon officer who carried out the murder of Wallenstein.

See Lancashire Inquests, 1205-1307; Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, xlviii.; Chronicles of Matthew Paris, Roger of Hoveden, Giraldus Cambrensis, &c.; _Dictionary of National Biography_; G.E.C.'s _Complete Peerage_; Carte's Ormonde papers; Paston Letters; Rolls of parliament; fine rolls, liberate rolls, pipe rolls, &c.

(O. BA.)

BUTLER, ALBAN (1710-1773), English Roman Catholic priest and hagiologist, was born in Northampton on the 24th of October 1710. He was educated at the English college, Douai, where on his ordination to the priesthood he held successively the chairs of philosophy and divinity. He laboured for some time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, held several positions as tutor to young Roman Catholic noblemen, and was finally appointed president of the English seminary at St Omer, where he remained till his death on the 15th of May 1773. Butler's great work, _The Lives of the Saints_, the result of thirty years' study (4 vols., London, 1756-1759), has passed through many editions and translations (best edition, including valuable notes, Dublin, 12 vols. 1779-1780). It is a popular and compendious reproduction of the _Acta Sanctorum_, exhibiting great industry and research, and is in all respects the best work of its kind in English literature.

See _An Account of the Life of A.B. by C.B._, _i.e._ by his nephew Charles Butler (London, 1799); and Joseph Gillow's _Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics_, vol. i.

BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1818-1893), American lawyer, soldier and politician, was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, on the 5th of November 1818. He graduated at Waterville (now Colby) College in 1838, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840, began practice at Lowell, Massachusetts, and early attained distinction as a lawyer, particularly in criminal cases. Entering politics as a Democrat, he first attracted general attention by his violent campaign in Lowell in advocacy of the passage of a law establishing a ten-hour day for labourers; he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and of the state senate in 1859, and was a delegate to the Democratic national conventions from 1848 to 1860. In that of 1860 at Charleston he advocated the nomination of Jefferson Davis and opposed Stephen A. Douglas, and in the ensuing campaign he supported Breckinridge.

After the Baltimore riot at the opening of the Civil War, Butler, as a brigadier-general in the state militia, was sent by Governor John A. Andrew, with a force of Massachusetts troops, to reopen communication between the Union states and the Federal capital. By his energetic and careful work Butler achieved his purpose without fighting, and he was soon afterwards made major-general, U.S.V. Whilst in command at Fortress Monroe, he declined to return to their owners fugitive slaves who had come within his lines, on the ground that, as labourers for fortifications, &c., they were contraband of war, thus originating the phrase "contraband" as applied to the negroes. In the conduct of tactical operations Butler was almost uniformly unsuccessful, and his first action at Big Bethel, Va., was a humiliating defeat for the National arms. Later in 1861 he commanded an expeditionary force, which, in conjunction with the navy, took Forts Hatteras and Clark, N.C. In 1862 he commanded the force which occupied New Orleans. In the administration of that city he showed great firmness and severity. New Orleans was unusually healthy and orderly during the Butler régime. Many of his acts, however, gave great offence, particularly the seizure of $800,000 which had been deposited in the office of the Dutch consul, and an order, issued after some provocation, on May 15th, that if any woman should "insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." This order provoked protests both in the North and the South, and also abroad, particularly in England and France, and it was doubtless the cause of his removal in December 1862. On the 1st of June he had executed one W.B. Mumford, who had torn down a United States flag placed by Farragut on the United States mint; and for this execution he was denounced (Dec. 1862) by President Davis as "a felon deserving capital punishment," who if captured should be reserved for execution. In the campaign of 1864 he was placed at the head of the Army of the James, which he commanded creditably in several battles. But his mismanagement of the expedition against Fort Fisher, N.C., led to his recall by General Grant in December.

He was a Republican representative in Congress from 1867 to 1879, except in 1875-1877. In Congress he was conspicuous as a Radical Republican in Reconstruction legislation, and was one of the managers selected by the House to conduct the impeachment, before the Senate, of President Johnson, opening the case and taking the most prominent part in it on his side; he exercised a marked influence over President Grant and was regarded as his spokesman in the House, and he was one of the foremost advocates of the payment in "greenbacks" of the government bonds. In 1871 he was a defeated candidate for governor of Massachusetts, and also in 1879 when he ran on the Democratic and Greenback tickets, but in 1882 he was elected by the Democrats who got no other state offices. In 1883 he was defeated on renomination. As presidential nominee of the Greenback and Anti-Monopolist parties, he polled 175,370 votes in 1884, when he had bitterly opposed the nomination by the Democratic party of Grover Cleveland, to defeat whom he tried to "throw" his own votes in Massachusetts and New York to the Republican candidate. His professional income as a lawyer was estimated at $100,000 per annum shortly before his death at Washington, D.C., on the 11th of January 1893. He was an able but erratic administrator and soldier, and a brilliant lawyer. As a politician he excited bitter opposition, and was charged, apparently with justice, with corruption and venality in conniving at and sharing the profits of illicit trade with the Confederates carried on by his brother at New Orleans and by his brother-in-law in the department of Virginia and North Carolina, while General Butler was in command.

See James Parton, _Butler in New Orleans_ (New York, 1863), which, however, deals inadequately with the charges brought against Butler; and _The Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General B.F. Butler: Butler's Book_ (New York, 1893), to be used with caution as regards facts.

BUTLER, CHARLES (1750-1832), British lawyer and miscellaneous writer, was born in London on the 14th of August 1750. He was educated at Douai, and in 1775 entered at Lincoln's Inn. He had considerable practice as a conveyancer, and after the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 was called to the bar. In 1832 he took silk, and was made a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. He died on the 2nd of June in the same year. His literary activity was enormous, and the number of his published works comprises about fifty volumes. The most important of them are the _Reminiscences_ (1821-1827); _Horae Biblicae_ (1797), which has passed through several editions; _Horae Juridicae Subsecivae_ (1804); _Book of the Roman Catholic Church_ (1825), which was directed against Southey and excited [v.04 p.0882] some controversy; lives of Erasmus, Grotius, Bossuet, Fénelon. He also edited and completed the _Lives of the Saints_ of his uncle, Alban Butler, Fearne's _Essay on Contingent Remainders_ and Hargrave's edition of _Coke upon Littleton's Laws of England_ (1775).

A complete list of Butler's works is contained in Joseph Gillow's _Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics_, vol. i. pp. 357-364.

BUTLER, GEORGE (1774-1853), English schoolmaster and divine, was born in London and educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he afterwards became fellow, in the capacity first of mathematical lecturer, and afterwards of classical tutor. He was elected a public examiner of the university in 1804, and in the following year was one of the select preachers. As head master of Harrow (1805-1829) his all-round knowledge, his tact and his skill as an athlete rendered his administration successful and popular. On his retirement he settled down at Gayton, Northamptonshire, a living which had been presented to him by his college in 1814. In 1836 he became chancellor of the diocese of Peterborough, and in 1842 was appointed dean of Peterborough. His few publications include some notes of Harrow, entitled _Harrow, a Selection of Lists of the School between 1770 and 1828_ (Peterborough, 1849).

His eldest son, GEORGE BUTLER (1819-1890), was principal of Liverpool College (1866-1882) and canon of Winchester. In 1852 he married Josephine Elizabeth, daughter of John Grey of Dilston. She died on the 30th of December 1906 (see her _Autobiography_, 1909). Mrs Josephine Butler, as she was commonly called afterwards, was a woman of intense moral and spiritual force, who devoted herself to rescue work, and specially to resisting the "state regulation of vice" whether by the C.D. Acts in India or by any system analogous to that of the continent in England.

His youngest son, the Rev. Dr HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER, became one of the best-known scholars of his day. Born in 1833, and educated at Harrow and Trinity, Cambridge, he was senior classic in 1855 and was elected a fellow of his college. In 1859 he became head master of Harrow, as his father had been, and only resigned on being made dean of Gloucester in 1885. In 1886 he was elected master of Trinity, Cambridge. His publications include various volumes of sermons, but his reputation rests on his wide scholarship, his remarkable gifts as a public speaker, and his great practical influence both as a headmaster and at Cambridge. He married first (1861), Georgina Elliot, and secondly (1888) Agneta Frances Ramsay (who in 1887 was senior classic at Cambridge), and had five sons and two daughters.

BUTLER, JOSEPH (1692-1752), English divine and philosopher, bishop of Durham, was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, on the 18th of May 1692. His father, a linen-draper of that town, was a Presbyterian, and it was his wish that young Butler should be educated for the ministry in that church. The boy was placed under the care of the Rev. Philip Barton, master of the grammar school at Wantage, and remained there for some years. He was then sent to Samuel Jones's dissenting academy at Gloucester, and afterwards at Tewkesbury, where his most intimate friend was Thomas Seeker, who became archbishop of Canterbury.

While at this academy Butler became dissatisfied with the principles of Presbyterianism, and after much deliberation resolved to join the Church of England. About the same time he began to study with care Samuel Clarke's celebrated _Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God_, which had been published as the Boyle Lectures a few years previously. With great modesty and secrecy Butler, then in his twenty-second year, wrote to the author propounding certain difficulties with regard to the proofs of the unity and omnipresence of the Divine Being. Clarke answered his unknown opponent with a gravity and care that showed his high opinion of the metaphysical acuteness displayed in the objections, and published the correspondence in later editions of the _Demonstration_. Butler acknowledged that Clarke's reply satisfied him on one of the points, and he subsequently gave his adhesion to the other. In one of his letters we already find the germ of his famous dictum that "probability is the guide of life."

In March 1715 he entered at Oriel College, Oxford, but for some time found it uncongenial and thought of migrating to Cambridge. But he made a close friend in one of the resident fellows, Edward Talbot, son of William Talbot, then bishop of Oxford, and afterwards of Salisbury and Durham. In 1718 he took his degree, was ordained deacon and priest, and on the recommendation of Talbot and Clarke was nominated preacher at the chapel of the Rolls, where he continued till 1726. It was here that he preached his famous _Fifteen Sermons_ (1726), including the well-known discourses on human nature. In 1721 he had been given a prebend at Salisbury by Bishop Talbot, who on his translation to Durham gave Butler the living of Houghton-le-Skerne in that county, and in 1725 presented him to the wealthy rectory of Stanhope. In 1726 he resigned his preachership at the Rolls.

For ten years Butler remained in perfect seclusion at Stanhope. He was only remembered in the neighbourhood as a man much loved and respected, who used to ride a black pony very fast, and whose known benevolence was much practised upon by beggars. Archbishop Blackburne, when asked by Queen Caroline whether he was still alive, answered, "He is not dead, madam, but buried." In 1733 he was made chaplain to Lord Chancellor Talbot, elder brother of his dead friend Edward, and in 1736 prebendary of Rochester. In the same year he was appointed clerk of the closet to the queen, and had to take part in the metaphysical conversation parties which she loved to gather round her. He met Berkeley frequently, but in his writings does not refer to him. In 1736 also appeared his great work, _The Analogy of Religion_.

In 1737 Queen Caroline died; on her deathbed she recommended Butler to the favour of her husband. George seemed to think his obligation sufficiently discharged by appointing Butler in 1738 to the bishopric of Bristol, the poorest see in the kingdom. The severe but dignified letter to Walpole, in which Butler accepted the preferment, showed that the slight was felt and resented. Two years later, however, the bishop was presented to the rich deanery of St Paul's, and in 1746 was made clerk of the closet to the king. In 1747 the primacy was offered to Butler, who, it is said, declined it, on the ground that "it was too late for him to try to support a falling church." The story has not the best authority, and though the desponding tone of some of Butler's writings may give it colour, it is not in harmony with the rest of his life, for in 1750 he accepted the see of Durham, vacant by the death of Edward Chandler. His charge to the clergy of the diocese, the only charge of his known to us, is a weighty and valuable address on the importance of external forms in religion. This, together with the fact that over the altar of his private chapel at Bristol he had a cross of white marble, gave rise to an absurd rumour that the bishop had too great a leaning towards Romanism. At Durham he was very charitable, and expended large sums in building and decorating his church and residence. His private expenses were exceedingly small. Shortly after his translation his constitution began to break up, and he died on the 16th of June 1752, at Bath, whither he had removed for his health. He was buried in the cathedral of Bristol, and over his grave a monument was erected in 1834, with an epitaph by Southey. According to his express orders, all his MSS. were burned after his death. Bishop Butler was never married. His personal appearance has been sketched in a few lines by Hutchinson:--"He was of a most reverend aspect; his face thin and pale; but there was a divine placidness which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent mind. His white hair hung gracefully on his shoulders, and his whole figure was patriarchal."

Butler was an earnest and deep-thinking Christian, melancholy by temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious condition of his age. In his view not only the religious life of the nation, but (what he regarded as synonymous) the church itself, was in an almost hopeless state of decay, as we see from his first and only charge to the diocese of Durham and [v.04 p.0883] from many passages in the _Analogy_. And though there was a complete remedy just coming into notice, in the Evangelical revival, it was not of a kind that commended itself to Butler, whose type of mind was opposed to everything that savoured of enthusiasm. He even asked John Wesley, in 1739, to desist from preaching in his diocese of Bristol, and in a memorable interview with the great preacher remarked that any claim to the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit was "a horrid thing, a very horrid thing, sir." Yet Butler was keenly interested in those very miners of Kingswood among whom Wesley preached, and left £500 towards building a church for them. It is a great mistake to suppose that because he took no great part in politics he had no interest in the practical questions of his time, or that he was so immersed in metaphysics as to live in the clouds. His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral. Man's conduct in life, not his theory of the universe, was what interested him. The _Analogy_ was written to counteract the practical mischief which he considered wrought by deists and other freethinkers, and the _Sermons_ lay a good deal of stress on everyday Christian duties. His style has frequently been blamed for its obscurity and difficulty, but this is due to two causes: his habit of compressing his arguments into narrow compass, and of always writing with the opposite side of the case in view, so that it has been said of the _Analogy_ that it raises more doubts than it solves. One is also often tempted away from the main course of the argument by the care and precision with which Butler formulates small points of detail.

His great work, _The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Course and Constitution of Nature_, cannot be adequately appreciated unless taken in connexion with the circumstances of the period at which it appeared. It was intended as a defence against the great tide of deistical speculation (see DEISM), which in the apprehension of many good men seemed likely to sweep away the restraints of religion and make way for a general reign of licence. Butler did not enter the lists in the ordinary way. Most of the literature evoked by the controversy on either side was devoted to rebutting the attack of some individual opponent. Thus it was Bentley versus Collins, Sherlock versus Woolston, Law versus Tindal. The _Analogy_, on the contrary, did not directly refer to the deists at all, and yet it worked more havoc with their position than all the other books put together, and remains practically the one surviving landmark of the whole dispute. Its central motive is to prove that all the objections raised against revealed or supernatural religion apply with equal force to the whole constitution of nature, and that the general analogy between the principles of divine government, as set forth by the biblical revelation, and those observable in the course of nature, leads us to the warrantable conclusion that there is one Author of both. Without altogether eschewing Samuel Clarke's _a priori_ system, Butler relies mainly on the inductive method, not professing to give an absolute demonstration so much as a probable proof. And everything is brought into closest relation with "that which is the foundation of all our hopes and of all our fears; all our hopes and fears which are of any consideration; I mean a Future Life."

Butler is a typical instance of the English philosophical mind. He will admit no speculative theory of things. To him the universe is no realization of intelligence, which is to be deciphered by human thought; it is a constitution or system, made up of individual facts, through which we thread our way slowly and inductively. Complete knowledge is impossible; nay, what we call knowledge of any part of the system is inherently imperfect. "We cannot have a thorough knowledge of any part without knowing the whole." So far as experience goes, "to us probability is the very guide of life." Reason is certainly to be accepted; it is pur natural light, and the only faculty whereby we can judge of things. But it gives no completed system of knowledge and in matters of fact affords only probable conclusions. In this emphatic declaration, that knowledge of the course of nature is merely probable, Butler is at one with Hume, who was a most diligent student of the bishop's works. What can come nearer Hume's celebrated maxim--"Anything may be the cause of anything else," than Butler's conclusion, "so that any one thing whatever may, for aught we know to the contrary, be a necessary condition to any other"?

It is this strong grasp or the imperfect character of our knowledge of nature and of the grounds for its limitation that makes Butler so formidable an opponent to his deistical contemporaries. He will permit no anticipations of nature, no _a priori_ construction of experience. "The constitution of nature is as it is," and no system of abstract principles can be allowed to take its place. He is willing with Hume to take the course of experience as the basis of his reasoning, seeing that it is common ground for himself and his antagonists. In one essential respect, however, he goes beyond Hume. The course of nature is for him an unmeaning expression unless it be referred to some author; and he therefore makes extensive use of the teleological method. This position is assumed throughout the treatise, and as against the deists with justice, for their whole argument rested upon the presupposition of the existence of God, the perfect Ruler of the world.

The premises, then, with which Butler starts are the existence of God, the known course of nature, and the necessary limitation of our knowledge. What does he wish to prove? It is not his intention _to prove God's perfect moral government over the world or the truth of religion_. His work is in no sense a philosophy of religion. His purpose is entirely defensive; he wishes to answer objections that have been brought against religion, and to examine certain difficulties that have been alleged as insuperable. And this is to be effected in the first place by showing that from the obscurities and inexplicabilities we meet with in nature we may reasonably expect to find similar difficulties in the scheme of religion. If difficulties be found in the course and constitution of nature, whose author is admitted to be God, surely the existence of similar difficulties in the plan of religion can be no valid objection against its truth and divine origin. That this is at least in great part Butler's object is plain from the slightest inspection of his work. It has seemed to many to be an unsatisfactory mode of arguing and but a poor defence of religion; and so much the author is willing to allow. But in the general course of his argument a somewhat wider issue appears. He seeks to show not only that the difficulties in the systems of natural and revealed religion have counterparts in nature, but also that the facts of nature, far from being adverse to the principles of religion, are a distinct ground for inferring their probable truth. He endeavours to show that the balance of probability is entirely in favour of the scheme of religion, that this probability is the natural conclusion from an inspection of nature, and that, as religion is a matter of practice, we are bound to adopt the course of action which is even probably the right one. If, we may imagine him saying, the precepts of religion are entirely analogous in their partial obscurity and apparent difficulty to the ordinary course of nature disclosed to us by experience, then it is credible that these precepts are true; not only can no objections be drawn against them from experience, but the balance of probability is in their favour. This mode of reasoning from what is known of nature to the probable truth of what is contained in religion is the celebrated method of analogy.

Although Butler's work is peculiarly one of those which ought not to be exhibited in outline, for its strength lies in the organic completeness with which the details are wrought into the whole argument, yet a summary of his results will throw more light on the method than any description can.

Keeping clearly in view his premises--the existence of God and the limited nature of knowledge--Butler begins by inquiring into the fundamental pre-requisite of all natural religion--the immortality of the soul. Evidently the stress of the whole question is here. Were man not immortal, religion would be of little value. Now, Butler does not attempt to prove the truth of the doctrine; that proof comes from another quarter. The only questions he asks are--Does experience forbid us to admit immortality as a possibility? Does experience furnish any probable reason for inferring that immortality is a fact? To the first of these a negative, to the second an affirmative answer is returned. All the analogies of our life here lead us to conclude that we shall continue to live after death; and neither from experience nor from the reason of the thing can any argument against the possibility of this be drawn. Immortality, then, is not unreasonable; it is probable. If, he continues, we are to live after death, it is of importance for us to consider on what our future state may depend; for we may be either happy or miserable. Now, whatever speculation may say as to God's purpose being necessarily universal benevolence, experience plainly shows us that our present happiness and misery depend upon our conduct, and are not distributed indiscriminately. Therefore no argument can be brought from experience against the possibility of our future happiness and misery likewise depending upon conduct. The whole analogy of nature is in favour of such a dispensation; it is therefore reasonable or probable. Further, we are not only under a government in which actions considered simply as such are rewarded and punished, but it is known from experience that virtue and vice are followed by their natural consequents--happiness and misery. And though the distribution of these rewards is not perfect, all hindrances are plainly temporary or accidental. It may therefore be concluded that the balance of probability is in favour of God's government in general being a moral scheme, where virtue and vice are respectively rewarded and punished. It need not be objected to the justice of [v.04 p.0884] this arrangement that men are sorely tempted, and may very easily be brought to neglect that on which their future welfare depends, for the very same holds good in nature. Experience shows man to be in a state of trial so far as regards the present; it cannot, therefore, be unreasonable to suppose that we are in a similar state as regards the future. Finally, it can surely never be advanced as an argument against the truth of religion that there are many things in it which we do not comprehend, when experience exhibits to us such a copious stock of incomprehensibilities in the ordinary course and constitution of nature.

It cannot have escaped observation, that in the foregoing course of argument the conclusion is invariably from experience of the present order of things to the reasonableness or probability of some other system--of a future state. The inference in all cases passes beyond the field of experience; that it does so may be and has been advanced as a conclusive objection against it. See for example a passage in Hume, _Works_ (ed. 1854), iv. 161-162, cf. p. 160, which says, in short, that no argument from experience can ever carry us beyond experience itself. However well grounded this reasoning may be, it altogether misses the point at which Butler aimed, and is indeed a misconception of the nature of analogical argument. Butler never attempts to _prove_ that a future life regulated according to the requirements of ethical law is a reality; he only desires to show that the conception of such a life is not irreconcilable with what we know of the course of nature, and that consequently it is _not unreasonable_ to suppose that there is such a life. Hume readily grants this much, though he hints at a formidable difficulty which the plan of the _Analogy_ prevented Butler from facing, the proof of the existence of God. Butler seems willing to rest satisfied with his opponents' admission that the being of God is proved by reason, but it would be hard to discover how, upon his own conception of the nature and limits of reason, such a proof could ever be given. It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler's argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists. It is, however, in some degree a defect; for his defence of religion against the deists rests on a view of reason which would for ever preclude a demonstrative proof of God's existence.

If, however, his premises be granted, and the narrow issue kept in view, the argument may be admitted as perfectly satisfactory. From what we know of the present order of things, it is not unreasonable to suppose that there will be a future state of rewards and punishments, distributed according to ethical law. When the argument from analogy seems to go beyond this, a peculiar difficulty starts up. Let it be granted that our happiness and misery in this life depend upon our conduct--are, in fact, the rewards and punishments attached by God to certain modes of action, the natural conclusion from analogy would seem to be that our future happiness or the reverse will probably depend upon our actions in the future state. Butler, on the other hand, seeks to show that analogy leads us to believe that our future state will depend upon our present conduct. His argument, that the punishment of an imprudent act often follows after a long interval may be admitted, but does not advance a single step towards the conclusion that imprudent acts will be punished hereafter. So, too, with the attempt to show that from the analogy of the present life we may not unreasonably infer that virtue and vice will receive their respective rewards and punishments hereafter; it may be admitted that virtuous and vicious acts are naturally looked upon as objects of reward or punishment, and treated accordingly, but we may refuse to allow the argument to go further, and to infer a perfect distribution of justice dependent upon our conduct here. Butler could strengthen his argument only by bringing forward prominently the absolute requirements of the ethical consciousness, in which case he would have approximated to Kant's position with regard to this very problem. That he did not do so is, perhaps, due to his strong desire to use only such premises as his adversaries the deists were willing to allow.

As against the deists, however, he may be allowed to have made out his point, that the substantial doctrines of natural religion are not opposed to reason and experience, and may be looked upon as credible. The positive proof of them is to be found in revealed religion, which has disclosed to us not only these truths, but also a further scheme not discoverable by the natural light. Here, again, Butler joins issue with his opponents. Revealed religion had been declared to be nothing but a republication of the truths of natural religion (Matthew Tindal, _Christianity as Old as the Creation_), and all revelation had been objected to as impossible. To show that such objections are invalid, and that a revelation is at least not impossible, Butler makes use mainly of his doctrine of human ignorance. Revelation had been rejected because it lay altogether beyond the sphere of reason and could not therefore be grasped by human intelligence. But the same is true of nature; there are in the ordinary course of things inexplicabilities; indeed we may be said with truth to know nothing, for there is no medium between perfect and completed comprehension of the whole system of things, which we manifestly have not, and mere faith grounded on probability. Is it unreasonable to suppose that in a revealed system there should be the same superiority to our intelligence? If we cannot explain or foretell by reason what the exact course of events in nature will be, is it to be expected that we can do so with regard to the wider scheme of God's revealed providence? Is it not probable that there will be many things not explicable by us? From our experience of the course of nature it would appear that no argument can be brought against the possibility of a revelation. Further, though it is the province of reason to test this revealed system, and though it be granted that, should it contain anything immoral, it must be rejected, yet a careful examination of the particulars will show that there is no incomprehensibility or difficulty in them which has not a counterpart in nature. The whole scheme of revealed principles is, therefore, not unreasonable, and the analogy of nature and natural religion would lead us to infer its truth. If, finally, it be asked, how a system professing to be revealed can substantiate its claim, the answer is, by means of the historical evidences, such as miracles and fulfilment of prophecy.

It would be unfair to Butler's argument to demand from it answers to problems which had not in his time arisen, and to which, even if they had then existed, the plan of his work would not have extended. Yet it is at least important to ask how far, and in what sense, the _Analogy_ can be regarded as a positive and valuable contribution to theology. What that work has done is to prove to the consistent deist that no objections can be drawn from reason or experience against natural or revealed religion, and, consequently, that the things objected to are not incredible and may be proved by external evidence. But the deism of the 17th century is a phase of thought that has no living reality now, and the whole aspect of the religious problem has been completely changed. To a generation that has been moulded by the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, by the historical criticism of modern theology, and by all that has been done in the field of comparative religion, the argument of the _Analogy_ cannot but appear to lie quite outside the field of controversy. To Butler the Christian religion, and by that he meant the orthodox Church of England system, was a moral scheme revealed by a special act of the divine providence, the truth of which was to be judged by the ordinary canons of evidence. The whole stood or fell on historical grounds. A speculative construction of religion was abhorrent to him, a thing of which he seems to have thought the human mind naturally incapable. The religious consciousness does not receive from him the slightest consideration. The _Analogy_, in fact, has and can have but little influence on the present state of theology; it was not a book for all time, but was limited to the problems of the period at which it appeared.

Throughout the whole of the _Analogy_ it is manifest that the interest which lay closest to Butler's heart was the ethical. His whole cast of thinking was practical. The moral nature of man, his conduct in life, is that on account of which alone an inquiry into religion is of importance. The systematic account of this moral nature is to be found in the famous _Sermons preached at the Chapel of the Rolls_, especially in the first three. In these sermons Butler has made substantial contributions to ethical science, and it may be said with confidence, that in their own department nothing superior in value appeared during the long interval between Aristotle and Kant. To both of these great thinkers he has certain analogies. He resembles the first in his method of investigating the end which human nature is intended to realize; he reminds of the other by the consistency with which he upholds the absolute supremacy of moral law.

In his ethics, as in his theology, Butler had constantly in view a certain class of adversaries, consisting partly of the philosophic few, partly of the fashionably educated many, who all participated in one common mode of thinking. The keynote of this tendency had been struck by Hobbes, in whose philosophy man was regarded as a mere selfish sensitive machine, moved solely by pleasures and pains. Cudworth and Clarke had tried to place ethics on a nobler footing, but their speculations were too abstract for Butler and not sufficiently "applicable to the several particular relations and circumstances of life."

His inquiry is based on teleological principles. "Every work, both of nature and art, is a system; and as every particular thing both natural and artificial is for some use or purpose out of or beyond itself, one may add to what has been already brought into the idea of a system its conduciveness to this one or more ends." Ultimately this view of nature, as the sphere of the realization of final causes, rests on a theological basis; but Butler does not introduce prominently into his ethics the specifically theological groundwork, and may be thought willing to ground his principle on experience. The ethical question then is, as with Aristotle, what is the [Greek: telos] of man? The answer to this question is to be obtained by an analysis of the facts of human nature, whence, Butler thinks, "it will as fully appear that this our nature, _i.e._ constitution, is adapted to virtue, as from the idea of a watch it appears that its nature, _i.e._ constitution or system, is adapted to measure time." Such analysis had been already attempted by Hobbes, and the result he came to was that man naturally is adapted only for a life of selfishness,--his end is the procuring of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. A closer examination, however, shows that this at least is false. The truth of the counter propositions, that man is [Greek: phusei politikos], that the full development of his being is impossible apart from society, becomes manifest on examination of the facts. For while self-love plays a most important part in the human economy, there is no less evidently a natural principle of benevolence. Moreover, among the particular [v.04 p.0885] passions, appetites and desires there are some whose tendency is as clearly towards the general good as that of others is towards the satisfaction of the self. Finally, that principle in man which reflects upon actions and the springs of actions, unmistakably sets the stamp of its approbation upon conduct that tends towards the general good. It is clear, therefore, that from this point of view the sum of practical morals might be given in Butler's own words--"that mankind is a community, that we all stand in a relation to each other, that there is a public end and interest of society, which each particular is obliged to promote." But deeper questions remain.

The threefold division into passions and affections, self-love and benevolence, and conscience, is Butler's celebrated analysis of human nature as found in his first sermon. But by regarding benevolence less as a definite desire for the general good as such than as kind affection for particular individuals, he practically eliminates it as a regulative principle and reduces the authorities in the polity of the soul to two--conscience and self-love.