Patrick Butler, 28th Lord Dunboyne, who died last week in London aged 87, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the genealogy of the Butlers, not only that of his own branch of this historic Irish family, but of all the numerous families of the name Butler whether they were obscure or eminent.
In answer to the hundreds of queries that he received, Paddy, as he was known to one and all, would send a meticulously researched, handwritten answer, very often on a black-edged paper in a black-edged envelope stamped with a black coronet. This did not signify the demise of some noble relative, but that Paddy was using up the stock of a less thrifty ancestor.
In 1967 he and his kinsmen, Hubert Butler, the essayist, and George Butler, a retired chief superintendent of the Waterford gardaí, formed the Butler Society. At the first rally over 400 Butlers sat down to dine in the semi-derelict Kilkenny Castle; by flickering candlelight they ate the food that had been brought by fast car from a hotel, carried up a ladder and through the window into the picture gallery. It was at this rally that the Chief Butler of Ireland, the Marquess of Ormonde, gave Kilkenny Castle to the people.
The Dunboyne title, one of the most ancient titles in Ireland dating from 1324, had gone to Paddy's branch of the family in 1800, when the Roman Catholic bishop of Cork, the 22nd Lord Dunboyne, died. At the age of 70, with only one eye and a tight black wig, the bishop had inherited the title on the death of his nephew. Determined to have an heir, he resigned his bishopric, became a Protestant and married his cousin.
The pope wrote: "Truly we shuddered with horror at this flagitious proceeding."
Alas, the marriage produced no heir, and when the bishop died he left his estates to Maynooth College.
Paddy spent his early youth at Knappogue Castle in Clare until his father sold it to the Land Commission in 1922. Though the rest of his life was in England, many of Paddy's interests were connected with Ireland. At Cambridge, when president of the Union, he carried the motion: "This house extends its fullest sympathy to Éire in the conflict of interest between Northern and Southern Ireland." He was supported by Frank Pakenham and opposed by Sir Edward Carson's son.
At the outbreak of war he joined the Irish Guards and was captured just before Dunkirk. As a prisoner he was badly treated for the first year and, though repatriated in 1943, he had lost a lung because of TB. In 1949 he was called to the English Bar, practising on the South Eastern Circuit until he was made recorder of Hastings. In 1972 he was appointed a circuit judge and retired 14 years later.
When the House of Lords was to be reformed in 1960, Paddy petitioned to have restored the right of the Irish peers to elect 28 of their number to sit in the upper house which had been granted under the Act of Union. He was bitter that the petition failed as he believed that the law lords had misconstrued the legislation under pressure from the political members.
He formed an Irish peers' association, which though they did not sit in the House of Lords went on annual outings and picnics and even a cruise on the Thames. He was a fellow and one-time president of the Irish Genealogical Research Society.
He is survived by his wife Anne, three daughters, Mary, Betty and Victoria; and his son, John, now the 29th Lord Dunboyne.
Patrick Butler, Lord Dunboyne: born January 27th, 1917 ; died May 19th, 2004