MARY I (1516-1558). Letter signed (“Marye the quene”) to Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond and 3rd Earl of Ossory (1531-1614), Greenwich, 13 January 1556/7.

MARY I (1516-1558). Letter signed (“Marye the quene”) to Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond and 3rd Earl of Ossory (1531-1614), Greenwich, 13 January 1556/7.

One page, oblong folio, 310 x 210mm., text in a neat secretary hand; addressed on verso “To our right trustie and right welbelovid Cousin the Erle of Ormonde” (trace of a seal). Matted and framed. Provenance: Sotheby’s London, 19 July 1994, lot 248.

"Bloody Mary" congratulates the Earl of Ormond on his part in a campaign against the Irish rebels. Mary offers her “right hartie thankes” after a report from her deputy in Ireland, Lord Fitzwalter, of Ormond’s military support in a campaign against the rebel Ó Mórdha lords of Laois, in which he had supplied troops at his own expense: “we undrestand by the Lord Fitzwalter … that you have so diligently and faithfully served us at his entree into Leix anenst [against] the Rebells the Omo[r]s, w[i]t[h] so faire a band of horsemen, galoglasse and kerne [heavy- and light-armed Irish mercenaries] levied and led at your owne coste, and Chardges, as there by the said rebells were moch the rather repressed, and forced to ordre”. Signed by Mary only on behalf of herself and King Philip.

The pre-eminent Irish peer of his age, Ormond had been raised at the English court under Henry VIII and Edward VI. He returned to Ireland in 1554, and was to play a prominent role in the policy of military subjugation and colonisation against the Irish under Mary and her successors over the succeeding 60 years.

Pre-Lot Text
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