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- Also called Theobald fitz Walter; Theobald Butler. Chief Butler of England; first Chief Butler of Ireland. Sheriff of Lancashire 1194; justice itinerant 1197.
He was raised in the remarkable household of his uncle, the justiciar of England Ranulph de Glanville, along with his brother Hubert Walter (who would become justiciar of England, chancellor of England, and Archbishop of Canterbury); Geoffrey fitz Peter (who would succeed Hubert Walter as justiciar); and, for a few years in the early 1180s, the future king John.
He was not the founder of Cockersand Abbey in Lancashire as reported in CP II; this is corrected in CP XIV. He did, however, found the Abbey of Nenagh. co. Tipperary, 1200; the Abbey of Wotheny, co. Limerick, 1205; and the monastery of Arklow, co. Wicklow.
"Theobald Walter or Fitz Walter, s. and h. of Hervey Walter, of West Dereham, Norfolk (owner of large estates in Norfolk and Suffolk), by Maud, da. and coh. of Theobald de Valoignes, accompanied John, Count of Mortain, Lord of Ireland (afterward King John), in 1185 into Ireland, who conferred on him vast estates in that Kingdom, including (before 1189) the fief of Arldow, &c., and (in or before May 1 192) the important office of Butler [I.], a dignity which, of itself, probably comprised (even if it did not comprise more than) Baronial rank and position for himself and his successors. He is said subsequently to have obtained the valuable monopoly of the prisage of wines [I.], and is styled Theobald Butler certainly as early as 1199. Returning to England, he obtained from Richard I, in 1194, a grant of the Wapentake of Amounderness with the Lordship of Preston, Lancs. He was Sheriff of Lancashire, personally or by deputy 1194-99. In 1197 he was one of the Justices Itinerant. He founded the Abbey of Nenagh, co. Tipperary 1200; the Abbey of Wotheny, co. Limerick (1205), and the monastery of Arklow, co. Wicklow. He m., in or shortly before 1200, Maud, da. of Robert le Vavasour with whom he acquired the manors of Edlington, co. York, Narborough, co. Leicester, &c. He d. between 4 Aug. 1205 and 14 Feb. 1205/6, and was bur. at Wotheny Abbey afsd. His widow m., in 1207, before 1 Oct., Fulk Fitzwarin." [Complete Peerage 2:447-48, as corrected by Volume 14.]
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