James de Barry, 4th Viscount Buttevant

Irish viscount (1520–1581)

James de Barry, 4th Viscount Buttevant and 17th Baron Barry (1520–1581) was an Irish magnate. He joined the rebels in the Desmond Rebellion and died in captivity at Dublin Castle.

James was born in 1520, probably at Rathbarry in Barryroe barony, eldest son of Richard de Barry and Isabel FitzGerald. His father was a son of James de Barry, Lord of Ibane, and his wife Elane MacCarthy of Muskerry. James's full name, inclusive of the patronymic, therefore was James FitzRichard de Barry. His mother was a daughter of Sir James FitzGerald of Leixlip, a younger son of Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare.

His predecessor in the viscountcy, James Fitz John Barry, died childless in 1558. Barry was his cousin but not his heir, but he seized the land and usurped the title. In 1567 Buttevant was knighted in Limerick by the Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy. In 1570 Buttevant received a lease, to hold for twenty one years, of "the site of the house of the friars at Killnamullagh, alias Buttevante, County Cork, with its appurtenances at an annual rent of 16 shillings and 8 pence". In 1575 Barry received a pardon. In 1579 at the outbreak of the second Desmond Rebellion, Buttevant as well as David, his son and successor, joined the rebels. Buttevant was arrested in July 1680 and detained at Dublin Castle where he died on 10 April 1581. In the subsequent confiscations of his estates, the Buttevant Franciscan Friary, together with its glebe, passed into the hands of the poet, Edmund Spenser.