The Battle of Piltown took place near Piltown,

County Kilkenny County Kilkenny () is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster and is part of the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. It is named after the City status in Ir ...

in 1462 as part of the

Wars of the Roses The Wars of the Roses, known at the time and in following centuries as the Civil Wars, were a series of armed confrontations, machinations, battles and campaigns fought over control of the English throne from 1455 to 1487. The conflict was fo ...

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

magnates The term magnate, 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, head of the government in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

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, th ...

, 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 (), sometimes referred to retrospectively as Anglo-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 1177 and 1542. T ...

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

FitzGerald dynasty The FitzGerald dynasty is a Hiberno-Norman noble and aristocratic dynasty, originally of Cambro-Normans, Cambro-Norman and Anglo-Normans, Anglo-Norman origin. They have been Peerage of Ireland, peers of Ireland since at least the 13th centur ...

and the

Butler dynasty Butler () 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. The family ha ...

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 Piltown Piltown {{England-battle-stub