however, destroyed, and yet some of the friars have not ceased to live unto this day (1629) either in the convent or in its neighbourhood. The original founder of the convent was Lord Barry, Viscount of Buttevant, whose family, which has now branched out into the Counts of Barrymore, and other most noble families, have their tombs in the same convent, in which also Lord MacDonagh and many nobles of adjacent estates have been buried from ancient days". After the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the Franciscan community in Buttevant welcomed the Confederate Catholic army of Lord Mountgarret – one of the leading Catholic magnates in the south of Ireland. The guardian, Father Boetius Egan, accompanied the army and took part in the Confederate Parliament in Kilkenny in 1642. In the ensuing war in Munster, the Protestant commander, Murrough O'Brien, Earl of Inchiquin, assembled his English Parliamentarian army in Buttevant and burned the friary church. Inchiquinn's conduct in the war earned him the nickname Murchadh na dTóiteán – "Murrough of the Burnings". A large quantity of bones from the nearby Battle of Knocknanuss (1647) were said to have been placed in the crypt under the church choir.<ref>National Monument plaque 202 on site</ref> Robert Bettesworth, High Sheriff of Cork, reported on 26 November 1731: "There is but one friary in the county and that is in or near Buttevant. I could never hear of what number of fryers it consisted". Again, in the Abstract of the State of Popery in the Diocese of Cloyne compiled and presented to the House of Lords in 1731 it was noted that in the parish of Buttevant there was "one old Mass House. One popish priest. Convents of fryers and nuns; a thatched house within the precincts of the old abbey wherein one or two old fryers have dwelt some time past. One of these was lately dead". An obituary list of the Clergy of the Diocese of Cloyne, compiled from memory by Bishop William Coppinger (1791–1830), dating from c. 1820, contains the names of those who must have been the last members of the Franciscan community at Buttevant Friary. Unfortunately the list was not written in chronological succession which makes it almost impossible to establish the exact dates of death of the four Franciscan friars mentioned in it. Bishop Coppinger merely states: "Pat Daly, a [Franciscan] [Friar] of Buttevant died of gout