BUTLER, James II (c.1680-1741), of Warminghurst Park, Suss.

Butler had bought the estate of Warminghurst from William Penn in 1702, and was returned for Arundel in 1705, when his election was reckoned by Lord Sunderland (Charles, Lord Spencer*) as a gain for the Whigs. He was classed as a ‘Churchman’ in an analysis of this Parliament. One of Butler’s few actions in parliament was on 6 Mar. 1706 when he acted as a teller on the Whig side during the debate on the bill for preventing frauds by bankrupts, telling for a clause giving the benefit of the Act to those bankrupts who voluntarily surrendered themselves by a certain date. He was again classed as a Whig in a list of early 1708. In 1710 he owned £2,000 worth of stock in the Bank of England. He did not stand again until 1713, when he was unsuccessful in contesting the county in the Whig interest, but after the accession of George I he represented Sussex for many years, being classed as a Whig in a comparative analysis of the 1713 and 1715 Parliaments, and voting with the Whigs until his death from smallpox on 17 May 1741, aged 61. His only son John sat for East Grinstead and Sussex under George II and George III.2 D. G. C. Elwes, Castles, Mansions and Manors of W. Suss. 250–1; Berry, 176; Egerton 3359 (unfol.).