Author Butler William Francis

brevet lieutenant colonel), the campaign of Tel-el-Kebir (after which he was made an aide-de-camp to the Queen) and the Sudan in 1884-86, being employed as colonel on the staff 1885 and brigadier-general 1885-86. In the latter year he was made a KCB. He served as brigadier-general on the staff in Egypt until 1892 when he was promoted to major-general and stationed at Aldershot, subsequent to which he was given command of the southeastern district. In 1898 he succeeded General William Howley Goodenough as commander-in-chief in South Africa, with the local rank of lieutenant-general. For a short period (December 1898-February 1899), during the absence of Sir Alfred Milner in England, he acted as high commissioner, and as such, and subsequently in his military capacity, he expressed views on the subject of the probabilities of war which were not approved by the home government; he was consequently ordered home to command the western district, and held this post until 1905. He also held the Aldershot command for a brief period in 1900-01. Sir William Butler was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1900 and continued to serve, finally leaving the King's service in 1905. In October, 1905, having reached the age limit of sixty-seven, he was placed on the retired list. The few years of life which remained to him he spent at Bansha Castle in Ireland, devoted chiefly to the cause of education. He was a frequent lecturer both in Dublin and the provinces on historical, social, and economic questions—he had been an admirer of Charles Stewart Parnell. He was a member of the senate of the National University of Ireland, and a commissioner of the Board of National Education.[1] In June, 1906, he was appointed Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and in 1909 he was made a member of the Irish Privy Council. He died at Bansha Castle and was buried at the cemetery of Killaldriffe, a few miles distant and not far from his ancestral home. He had long been known as a descriptive writer, since his publication of The Great Lone Land (1872) and other works and he was the biographer (1899) of Sir George Colley. He had started work on his autobiography a few years before his death, but died before it was completed. His youngest daughter, Eileen, Viscountess Gormanston, completed the work and had it published in 1911. Eileen found among his papers a poem he had written, which began: