antreds of Limerick land to William de Braose. But the great
archbishop soon found means to bring his brother back to favour, and on the
2nd of January 1201-2 Amounderness, by writ of the king, is to be restored
to Theobald Walter, _dilecto et fideli nostra_, Within a year or two
Theobald left England to end his days upon his Arklow fief, busying himself
with religious foundations at Wotheney in Limerick, at Arklow and at
Nenagh. At Wotheney he is said to have been buried shortly before the 12th
of February 1205-6, when an entry in the Close Roll is concerned with his
widow. This widow, Maude, daughter of Robert le Vavasor of Denton, was
given up to her father, who, buying the right of marrying her at a price of
1200 marks and two palfreys, gave her to Fulk fitz-Warine. Theobald, the
son and heir of Theobald and Maude, a child of six years old, was likewise
taken into the keeping of his grandfather Robert, but letters from the
king, dated the 2nd of March 1205-6, told Robert, "as he loved his body,"
to surrender the heir at once to Gilbert fitz-Reinfrid, the baron of
Kendal.

Adding to its possessions by marriages the house advanced itself among the
nobility of Ireland. On the 1st of September 1315, its chief, Edmund Walter
_alias_ Edmund the Butler, for services against the Scottish raiders and
Ulster rebels, had a charter of the castle and manors of Carrick,
Macgriffyn and Roscrea to hold to him and his heirs _sub nomine et honore
comitis de Karryk_. This charter, however, while apparently creating an
earldom, failed, as Mr Round has explained, to make his issue earls of
Carrick. But James, the son and heir of Edmund, having married in 1327
Eleanor de Bohun, daughter of Humfrey, [v.04 p.0880] earl of Hereford and
Essex, high constable of England, by a daughter of Edward I., was created
an Irish earl on the 2nd of November 1328, with the title of Ormonde.

From the early years of the 14th century the Ormonde earls, generation by
generation, were called to the chief government of Ireland as lords-keeper,
lords-lieutenant, deputies or lords-justices, and unlike their hereditary
enemies the Geraldines they kept a tradition of loyalty to the English
crown and to English custom. Their history is full of warring with the
native Irish, and as the sun stood still upon Gibeon, even so, we are told,
it rested over the red bog of Athy while James the White Earl was staying
the wild O'Mores. More than one of the earls of Ormonde ha