The Battle of Piltown took place near

Piltown Piltown (), historically known as Ballypoyle, is a village in County Kilkenny, Ireland. It lies on the R698 regional road, which was the N24 national primary road before the locality was bypassed in 2002. Approaching Piltown from Carrick-on- ...

County Kilkenny County Kilkenny ( gle, Contae Chill Chainnigh) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster and is part of the South-East Region. It is named after the city of Kilkenny. Kilkenny County Council is the local authority for the cou ...

in 1462 as part of the

Wars of the Roses The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These wars were fought bet ...

. It was fought between the supporters of the two leading Irish

magnates The magnate term, from the late Latin ''magnas'', a great man, itself from Latin ''magnus'', "great", means a man from the higher nobility, a man who belongs to the high office-holders, or a man in a high social position, by birth, wealth or ot ...

Thomas FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Desmond Thomas FitzJames FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Desmond (died 1467/68), called 'Thomas of Drogheda', and also known as the Great Earl, was the son of James FitzGerald, 6th Earl of Desmond and Mary de Burgh. He was Lord Deputy of Ireland under the Lieute ...

, head of the government in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

and a committed

Yorkist The House of York was a cadet branch of the English royal House of Plantagenet. Three of its members became kings of England in the late 15th century. The House of York descended in the male line from Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, t ...

, and

John Butler, 6th Earl of Ormond John Butler, 6th Earl of Ormond (died 14 December 1476) was considered one of the first gentlemen of the age in which he lived. He was an ambassador to the most important courts of Europe. Family John Butler, 6th Earl of Ormond was the second ...

who backed the Lancastrian cause. It ended in decisive victory for Desmond and his Yorkists, with Ormond's army suffering more than a thousand casualties. This effectively ended Lancastrian hopes in Ireland and bolstered FitzGerald control for a further half-century. The Ormonds departed into exile, although they were later pardoned by

Edward IV Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England ...

.McCormack p.40 It was the only major battle to be fought in the

Lordship of Ireland The Lordship of Ireland ( ga, Tiarnas na hÉireann), sometimes referred to retroactively as Norman Ireland, was the part of Ireland ruled by the King of England (styled as "Lord of Ireland") and controlled by loyal Anglo-Norman lords between ...

during the Wars of the Roses. It is also part of the long-running feud between the

FitzGerald dynasty The FitzGerald/FitzMaurice Dynasty is a noble and aristocratic dynasty of Cambro-Norman, Anglo-Norman and later Hiberno-Norman origin. They have been peers of Ireland since at least the 13th century, and are described in the Annals of the ...

and the

Butler dynasty Butler ( ga, de Buitléir) is the name of a noble family whose members were, for several centuries, prominent in the administration of the Lordship of Ireland and the Kingdom of Ireland. They rose to their highest prominence as Dukes of Ormonde. ...

References

Bibliography

* Jeffrey James. ''Edward IV: Glorious Son of York''. Amberley Publishing, 2015. * Anthony M. McCormack. ''The Earldom of Desmond 1463-1583: The Decline and Crisis of a Feudal Lordship''. Four Courts Press, 2005. 1462 in Ireland

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