Biography

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Richard Butler, 1st Earl of Glengall (1775 - 1819)

Richard Butler was born on 13 November 1775. He was the son of James Butler, 9th Baron Caher and Sarah Nichols. He married Emilia Jefferyes, daughter of Major James St. John Jefferyes and Arabella Fitzgibbon, on 13 August 1793 in London. The couple had two children, Lady Harriet Anne and Richard. Lord Glengall died on 30 January 1819 at age 43 at Caher Castle, County Tipperary, and was succeeded as Earl of Glengall by his son.

Richard Butler, 2nd Earl of Glengall (1794 - 1858)

Richard Butler, second Earl of Glengall was born on 17 May 1794. He married Margaret Lauretta Mellish on 20 March 1834. She was the daughter and co-heiress (with her elder sister) of the recently deceased William Mellish of Woodford in Essex. Mellish was a shady English army contractor who owned a valuable estate in London's docklands, which Margaret brought with her on her marriage.

Glengall's financial situation had been dire for a long time. It was thought that his estate - which had an annual gross rental of £15,000, "owes more than it could pay". Lady Glengall's trustees apparently were prepared to spend the whole of her marriage portion redeeming the estate and it was thought that most of the creditors would allow time for appropriate arrangements to be made.

Glengall frustrated these generous intentions himself. He was carried away by his dazzling marriage and by the knowledge that his wife was worth much more than the £100,000 initial settlement. From 1839, he set about a highly ambitious and uneconomic programme of estate improvement which included the restoration of the old, ruinous Cahir Castle and the rebuilding of much of the town of Cahir. Eventually, a combination of the Irish Famine, a lawsuit over the Mellish fortune between Lady Glengall and her elder sister and co-heiress Lady Elizabeth Thynne, and the mounting alarm of Lady Glengall's trustees, forced him to abandon his plans in 1847. By 1848, Glengall's debts amounted to about £300,000. He was declared bankrupt in 1849 and was still bankrupt when he died in 1858.

Creevey said that Lady Conyngham owed her first introduction to Dublin high life exclusively to Lady Glengall.

Glengall seems to have been the author of "The Irish Tutor, or New Lights", a farce in one Act. He died on 22 June 1858 at age 64, without male issue., On his death, all of his titles became extinct.

Much of this information was taken from The Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland 1740-1840,  by A. P. W. Malcomson