Butler, Alban

BUTLER, ALBAN: English Roman Catholic; b. at Appletree (70 m. n.w. of London), Northamptonshire, Oct. 24, 1710; d. at St. Omer (22 m. s.e. of Calais), France, May 15, 1773. He was educated at Douai and became professor there of philosophy and divinity; was ordained priest, 1735; traveled through France and Italy, 1745–46, and then was sent for a short time to the Roman Catholic mission in Staffordshire. Later he was tutor to Edward Howard, duke of Norfolk, and accompanied him to Paris; about 1766 he became president of the English college at St. Omer. He labored for thirty years on his chief work, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, which was published anonymously in four volumes (vol. iii., 2 parts) at London, 1756–59. The second edition, with notes and other matter omitted in the first edition, edited by Dr. Carpenter, archbishop of Dublin, appeared at Dublin in twelve volumes in 1779–80. It has appeared in several later editions and abridgments (as by F. C. Husenbeth, with omission of the notes and most of the shorter lives, 2 vols., London, 1857–60), and was translated into French and Italian. His nephew, Charles Butler, prepared a continuation (London, 1823). A complete general index was published in 1886.

Bibliography: Charles Butler, An Account of the Life and Writings of Alban Butler, Edinburgh, 1800, contained also in vol. iii of the works of Charles Butler, London, 1817, and in many editions of the Lives; DNB, viii. 33–34.