An original Vellum Commission, signed ‘Ormonde’ as Lord Lieutenant of the County of Somerset, appointing John Piggott to be one of his Deputy Lieutenants by ORMONDE, James Butler, 2nd Duke

21 July 1704. Vellum 10 x 12 inches, with a particularly fine wafer seal affixed, in very good condition, folds. James FitzJames Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, 13th Earl of Ormond, 7th Earl of Ossory, 2nd Baron Butler, KG (1665 – 1745), Irish statesman and soldier. Like his grandfather the 1st Duke, he was raised as a Protestant, unlike his extended family who held to Roman Catholicism. He served in the campaign to put down the Monmouth Rebellion, in the Williamite War in Ireland, in the Nine Years' War and in the War of the Spanish Succession but was accused of treason and went into exile after the Jacobite rising of 1715.