Charles Butler

For the English vicar, philologist, naturalist and proponent of spelling reform, see Charls Butler

Charles Butler KC (August 14, 1750 – June 2, 1832), British lawyer and miscellaneous writer, was born in London.

He was educated at Douai, and in 1775 entered at Lincoln's Inn. He had considerable practice as a conveyancer, and after the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 was called to the bar. In 1832 he took silk, and was made a bencher of Lincoln's Inn.

His literary activity was enormous, and the number of his published works comprises about fifty volumes. The most important of them are:

• Reminiscences (1821–1827)
• Horae Biblicae (1797), which has passed through several editions
• Horae Juridicae Subsecivae (1804)
• Book of the Roman Catholic Church (1825), which was directed against Southey and excited some controversy
• lives of Erasmus, Grotius, Bossuet, Fénelon

He also edited and completed the Lives of the Saints of his uncle, Alban Butler, Fearne's Essay on Contingent Remainders and Hargrave's edition of Coke upon Littleton's Laws of England (1775).

A complete list of Butler's works is contained in Joseph Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics, vol. i. pp. 357-364.