Butler, Edmund (‘MacRichard’) (c.1420–1464), and James (c.1440–1487), father and son, were successively head of the Polestown Butlers, one of the minor branches of the family. Edmund, usually called MacRichard, was eldest son of Richard Butler, younger brother of James Butler (qv), 4th earl of Ormond. Fostered by Richard O'Hedian (qv), archbishop of Cashel, Edmund MacRichard was politically active from the early 1440s and generally served as his uncle's deputy within the earldom of Ormond, a post he also held for his cousins after the earl's death (1452).
His career serves to underline the chaotic nature of politics in the lordship in the mid-fifteenth century. While he acted to protect the Ormond lordship from external threats, Gaelic or Anglo-Irish, he showed little hesitation in allying himself with Gaelic lords when the need arose, as when he raided into Wexford (1454) in the company of Domhnall Riabhach (MacMurrough) (qv) or when he raided Meath (1461) with Conn Ó Conchobhair Failghe (O' Connor Faly) (qv). His branch of the Butler family was prepared to make marriage alliances with Gaelic lords to secure the lordship: MacRichard married a daughter of Maolruanaidh Ó Cearbhaill (O' Carroll) (qv), and his son James married Sadbh, a daughter of Domhnall Riabhach Caomhánach.
When John Butler (qv), 6th earl of Ormond, came to Ireland in 1462, Edmund MacRichard led the Butlers to support him. MacRichard's defeat at the battle of Pilltown (in which he fought, contrary to the wishes of the earl) ended the earl's pro-Lancastrian revolt, and cost MacRichard the Psalter of Cashel, an heirloom that he was forced to give to Thomas fitz James (qv), 8th earl of Desmond, as part of his ransom. MacRichard was attainted (October 1462) by the Irish parliament for his part in the rebellion and died in the summer of 1464, before the attainder was lifted. Deeply interested in Gaelic literature, Edmund MacRichard in 1453 had commissioned scribes to copy out Irish literary and historical texts (Bodl., Laud miscellanea 610), a treasure which he had to surrender as part of his ransom to the earl of Desmond, along with the Psalter of Cashel.
Edmund's place was assumed by his son James Butler , who was restored (1468) in the aftermath of the execution of the earl of Desmond. James's marriage to Sadbh Kavanagh needed a papal dispensation, but the couple lived together for years before that dispensation arrived. As a result their third son, Piers (qv), was the first legitimately born child and was regarded as their heir. Although James recognised the loyalty owed to his cousin the 6th earl of Ormond (qv), he increasingly treated the earl's Irish lands as his own, and in 1487 he bequeathed the position of earl's deputy to his son Piers without consulting the earl. The greater part of James Butler's life was marked by the absenteeism of the earls of Ormond, and his career illustrated the effects that absenteeism had on the Ormond lordship. He raised his son to think of the earls as distant lords and himself as their heir, an attitude that would cause frictions between Piers Butler and Thomas (qv), 7th earl of Ormond, in the 1490s.