re-occupied as early as the accession of James I, Father Donatus Mooney's Provincial Report of 1617/1618 establishes that the friary certainly had once again reverted to Lord Barry by 1615, or perhaps earlier, indicating that the 1570 lease of Buttevant friary from the crown had been renewed in favour of Lord Barry, albeit with conditions concerning the occupation of the conventual buildings by the friars. Two friars still continued to live in the town and officiated at burials. Father Mooney states that the friars "may not live in the convent because the brother of the late Lord de Barry is bound under pain of heavy fine to heretics, not to permit the friars to live there. He is a Catholic, and is unwillingly forced to act thus, for he holds the monastery from the King, and in other respects, as far as he can, favours the friars. His name is Lord John de Barry" (Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels). The Brussels manuscript mentions that in 1615 the large church of the friary "still remains, roofed with wooden tiles, and in it are many of the tombs of the nobility. The friary buildings were not well-proportioned, but they were spacious and numerous". In March 1607, the Protestant bishop of Cork, William Lyon, complained to the Lord Deputy that there was "an abbey at Buttevant where divers friars in their habits go up and down the country to the grief of the godly, in a kingdom where so godly a king as his Majesty reigneth. The warden's name is, as they call him, Conor M'Morice". The complaint also contains the names of the other friars then at Buttevant: "William Foy, Nicholas Sheynan and WIlliam Fer[...]" and notes that in the abbey there were "continual and daily masses and assemblies and conventicles, little for the good of the King and the State". A further pertinent manuscript, the Brevis Synopsis Provincialis F.F. Minorum compiled between 1626 and 1629 by Father Francis Matthews, is preserved in the archive of the Irish Franciscan Convent of St. Isidore in Rome. It make two references to the friary in Buttevant. It recounts that "in the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England, the friars were at times expelled from thence; some were captured and imprisoned. Although the statues in the church were broken the church itself was left standing because of the tombs of the nobility therein; the convent buildings were,