Rev. William Butler

Awarded with others part of the compensation for the enslaved people on Grove estate on Nevis, as mortgagee and possibly as representative of his father Duke Butler.  

1. William Butler, son of Duke of Ockford Dorset clerk, matriculated Wadham College Oxford 09/05/1780 aged 17, BCL 1787. 'There is a small tablet on the south wall of the church' at Frampton Dorset to Rev. William Butler LLB Vicar of Frampton who departed this life August 13 1843 aged 81. Living in Frampton in 1841, age 75, vicar.

2. Duke Butler, son of Thomas of Camberwell Surrey gent matriculated Queen's College Oxford 14/06/1740 aged 17, BA 1744, rector Okeford Fitzpaine 30/07/1750-11/01/1780, died 11/02/1780. Captain Thomas Butler of Nevis, whose will was dated 02/12/1687 had 4 sons: Will[iam]; Duke; Tho[mas] and James. Duke Butler of Okeford was the son of Thomas (London merchant of Camberwell, d. 1739 or 1744), the third son of Captain Thomas Butler.

3. M.C. Rintoul identified William Butler as the model for Thomas Hardy's Rev. Billy Toogood in the short story Andrey Satchel and the Parson and Clerk (1891).

T71/882 Nevis no. 100, which identifies him as of Frampton Dorset.

1. Ancestry.com, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 [database online]; Vere Langford Oliver, Caribbeana being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies (6 vols., London, Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke, 1910-1919), Vol. II, p. 68, which refers to an account of 'Billy Butler the foxhunting parson' in Notes & Queries 10 S, x., 310, 395, 453 and xi, 15; CCEd [database online] Person ID 23605 (William Butler). 1841 census online.

2. CCEd Person ID 49700 (Duke Butler); Caribbeana Vol. II, pp. 60-61, 'Butler of Nevis'; Vere Langford Oliver History of Antigua Vol. I p.93 gives 1744 as the death-date of Thomas Butler of Camberwell.

3. M.C. Rintoul, Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction (1993), p. 51 and 257, which draws on F.B. Pinion, A Hardy Companion (London: Macmillan, 1968); Terry Townsend, 'The slave-owning vicar of Okeford-Fitzpaine', http://www.blackmorevale.co.uk/slave-owning-vicar-Okeford-Fitzpaine/story-28340933-detail/story.html [accessed 24/02/2016].