The Buttevant Franciscan Friary is a ruined 13th-century Franciscan friary is situated in the middle of the town of Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland. The Augustinian friary in nearby Ballybeg is often confused with the Buttevant Franciscan Friary in historical documents. History The friary was founded circa. 1251, by David Óg Barry. It is dedicated to St Thomas Becket. By 1324 Buttevant friary consisted of a community of Irish and Anglo-Norman friars and was sufficiently important to maintain its own studium, or house of studies. Racial tensions, however, troubled the community. In 1327 a commission established by Pope John XXII in 1317 to investigate the Irish Province of the Order determined the transfer of the Gaelic lector from Buttevant to one of its Gaelic friaries. In 1325, the general chapter of the Order, held at Lyons, was informed that the obedience of the friary of St. Thomas at Buttevant had been transferred to the recently erected custody of Cork, thereby taking the house out of Irish control and subjecting it to that of the Anglo-Norman custody of Cork. In the medieval burgage of Buttevant, the friary porch was the place to make legal agreements, renew or grant leases on Lady Day and Michelmas, swear fealty, do homage and contract marriage. At the time of its dissolution, c. 1540, the examining jurors certified that the friary at Buttevant consisted of the friary church and conventual buildings with no surplus appurtenances; a garden and cemetery containing an acre and a half of ground worth 6 shillings and 8 pence; and a watermill worth 30 shillings, bringing the total extent of its property to 36 shillings and 8 pence. In 1570, James de Barry, 4th Viscount Buttevant, received a lease, to hold for twenty-one years, of "the site of the house of the friars at Killnamullagh, alias Buttevante, Co. Cork, with its appurtenances at an annual rent of 16 shillings and 8 pence". At the outbreak of the Desmond Rebellions, the Viscount Buttevant joined the rebels and on the subsequent confiscations of his estates, the friary in Buttevant, together with its glebe, passed into the hands of Edmund Spenser in the Munster Plantation, one of the first of the Plantations of Ireland. A chalice dating to roughly the year 1600, and almost identical to the Timoleague (Dale-Browne) Chalice is associated with the friary. While there is some evidence to suggest that the friary was