Family and Education

b. ?1503/4, prob. s. of John Butler of Solihull, Warws. by Catherine, da. and h. of Alan Hore of Elmdon, Warws. educ. ?M. Temple. m. Alice, at least 1s. 4da. suc. fa. ?4 Feb. 1512.1

Offices Held

Bailiff, Warwick 1555-6; servant of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester by 1571.2

Biography

The surname of the junior Member for Warwick in Mary’s last Parliament cannot be derived with certainty from the surviving sources: on the election indenture it may be read as either Buller or Butler, in the Crown Office list (which is followed by the Official Return) it appears as Buller and in the variant of that list preserved in the William Salt Library as Butler or even possibly Butter. The probability that the form Buller is a copyist’s error rests on the fact that the John Butler who was to sit for Warwick in 1563 was already a figure in the town by 1558, and thus a likely Member, whereas the only John Buller found in the neighbourhood was an obscure small landowner at Halford in south Warwickshire. Butler was, moreover, almost certainly the son of John Butler whose naming of Sir Robert Throckmorton as an overseer of his will is also suggestive in the light of the younger one’s education at the Middle Temple, where Sir Robert had sent his own son George Throckmorton. In 1542 Butler sold his mother’s manor of Elmdon to Thomas Marrow, a Middle Templar and a kinsman of the Throckmortons.3

Butler was appointed one of the 12 principal burgesses of Warwick under the charter of 1554 and was elected bailiff a year later. In the following reign he entered the service of the Earl of Leicester, although remaining ‘one of the principal burgesses’ of Warwick, and he was to name two of Leicester’s servants, Thomas Dudley^† and John Huband^†, overseers of his will, made on 25 Sept. 1572 and proved on the following 19 Feb.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Authors: S. M. Thorpe / Alan Davidson

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from age at presumed fa.’s i.p.m., C142/27/17. Dugdale, Warws. ii. 1001; HP, ed. Wedgwood, 1439-1509 (Biogs.), 145; PCC 7 Peter.
• 2. Black Bk. of Warwick, 38, 424.
• 3. C193/32/2, 219/25/120; Wm. Salt Lib. SMS 264; Worcs. RO, 008.7/1565/63; CPR, 1563-6, p. 134; E. Stephens, Clerks of the Counties, 172; PCC 9 Fetiplace; VCH Warws. iv. 67.
• 4. CPR, 1554-5, pp. 18-21; PCC 7 Peter.