Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde

General The Marquess of Clanricarde PC (Ire)
Uilleag de Búrca
Painted portrait of the 1st Marquess of Clanricarde
Governor of Galway
In office 1636–1652
Succeeded by
Parliamentary Offices Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal Hereditary Peerage 12 November 1635 – July 1657 Preceded by Richard Burke Succeeded by Extinct Member of the Irish House of Lords Hereditary Peerage 12 November 1635 – July 1657 Preceded by Richard Burke Succeeded by Richard Burke
Personal details
Born	Ulick Burke 1604 (1604) London, England
Died	1657 (1658) Kent, England
Resting place	Westminster Abbey
Nationality	Irish
Spouse	Anne Compton
Children	Margaret Burke
Parents	Richard, 4th Earl of Clanricarde Frances Walsingham
Military career
Allegiance	English Royalists
Years of service	1636–1656
Rank	Lieutenant General Lord Deputy General
Commands	Regiment of Foot
Battles / wars	Irish Confederate Wars Cromwellian Campaign Battle of Tecroghan Battle of Meelick Island

Ulick MacRichard Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, 5th Earl of Clanricarde, 2nd Earl of St Albans PC (Ire) (English: /ˈjuːlɪk ... klænˈrɪkɑːrd/ YOO-lik ... klan-RIK-ard; 1604 – July 1657), styled Lord Dunkellin (/dʌnˈkɛlɪn/ dun-KEL-in) until 1635, was an Irish nobleman who was involved in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A Catholic Royalist who had overall command of the Irish forces during the later stages of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, he was created Marquess of Clanricarde (1646).

Birth and origins

Family tree

Ulick Burke with wife, parents, and selected relatives. Ulick 3rd Earl d. 1601 Honora Burke b. c. 1535 Richard 4th Earl 1572–1635 Frances Walsingham 1567–1633 William Burke d. 1626 Joan O'Shaugh- nessy Ulick 1st Marquess 1604–1657 Anne Compton Richard 6th Earl d. 1666 William 7th Earl d. 1687 Lettice Shirley c. 1617 – 1655 Richard 8th Earl d. aft. 1708 John 9th Earl 1642–1722 Mary Talbot d. 1711 Michael 10th Earl 1686–1726 Anne Smith d. 1733 Legend XXX Subject of the article XXX Earls & Marquesses of Clanricarde XXX Earls of Clancarty

Ulick was the son of Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde by his wife Frances Walsingham. Ulick's father was from an Hiberno-Norman family who had been long settled in the west of Ireland. Although during the early sixteenth century the family had rebelled against the Crown on several occasions, Ulick's father had been a strong supporter of Queen Elizabeth. He fought on the Queen's side during Tyrone's Rebellion, notably at the victorious Battle of Kinsale, where he was wounded. After the war, he married the widow of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, a recent commander in Ireland, who was the daughter of the English Secretary of State and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham.

The Marquess's English residence, Somerhill House

Portumna Castle: The Marquess's Irish residence

Marriage

In 1622, Ulick married Anne Compton (d.1675), daughter of William Compton, 1st Earl of Northampton, and his wife, Elizabeth Spencer.

Ulick and Anne had an only child, Margaret (died 1698), who married:

• 1st Charles MacCarty, Viscount Muskerry, and had a son Charles, 3rd Earl of Clancarty who died young
• 2ndly Robert Villiers, son of Robert Danvers or Villiers, who was himself the suppositious son of John Villiers, 1st Viscount Purbeck
• 3rdly the notorious rake and soldier of fortune Robert Fielding

Early career

Ulick was summoned to the House of Lords as Lord Burgh in 1628, and succeeded his father as 5th Earl of Clanricarde in 1635. In 1636, he inherited Somerhill House on the death of his father. He was a staunch opponent of the policies of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, who had attempted to seize much of the great Burke inheritance in Connacht for the Crown; there was also personal ill-feeling between the two men since the dispute was thought by many to have hastened the death of Ulick's elderly father. He sat in the Short Parliament of 1640 and attended King Charles I on the Scottish expedition. Charles, unlike Strafford, liked and trusted Lord Clanricarde.

Wars of the Three Kingdoms

Clanricarde was appointed Governor of Galway from 1636, and served as Lieutenant-General and Commander in Connaught from 1644 and was appointed a member of the Privy Council of Ireland (1645). He was Lieutenant-General of the Army from 1646 to 1649 and Lord Deputy General from 1650 to 1652 and left Ireland for England in October 1652.

Somerhill was sequestered by Parliament in 1645, following the Battle of Naseby. During the Irish Confederate Wars, Lord Clanricarde supported the Royalist leader Ormonde in defending Ireland for Charles I against the Parliamentarians by uniting Catholic and Protestant nobles (he being Catholic). He did not join the Catholic Confederate Ireland, but instead helped to broker a military alliance between the Confederates and English Royalists. He commanded the forces of this alliance during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, after Lord Ormonde fled the country, and soldiers of his Connaught army helped to win a minor victory at the Battle of Tecroghan. Only a few months later, however, his army was wiped out during the Battle of Meelick Island. Clanricarde was a skilful diplomat but not a great soldier. Like Ormonde, Clanricarde was distrusted by most Catholics in Ireland (he was widely considered to be a friend of the notorious Charles Coote) and thus was thus not capable of halting the Parliamentarian conquest of the country. He was also widely regarded as a man whose actions were governed almost entirely by self-interest.

Later life

In 1652, Lord Clanricarde made peace with the victorious Oliver Cromwell. He lost his lands in the Act of Settlement 1652 but his heirs regained them after the Restoration of Charles II in the Act of Settlement 1662. On his death, the marquessate became extinct; the earldom passed to his cousin Richard.

Arms

Coat of arms of Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde

Crest A Cat-a-Mountain sejant guardant proper, collared and chained Or. Escutcheon Or, a cross gules in the first quarter a lion rampant sable. Supporters Two Cats-a-Mountain sejant guardant proper, collared and chained Or. Motto UNG ROY, UNG FOY, UNG LOY (One king, one faith, one law)

Ancestry

Ancestors of Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde
8. Richard Burke, 2nd Earl of Clanricarde 4. Ulick Burke, 3rd Earl of Clanricarde 9. Margaret O'Brien 2. Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde 10. John Burke of Clogheroka 5. Honora Burke 11. 1. Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde 12. William Walsingham 6. Sir Francis Walsingham 13. Joyce Denny 3. Frances Walsingham 14. Henry St Barbe 7. Ursula St Barbe 15. Eleanor Lewknor

See also

• House of Burgh, an Anglo-Norman and Hiberno-Norman dynasty founded in 1193

Notes and references

Sources

• "Burgh, Ulick de" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
• Burke, John; Burke, Bernard (1844). Encyclopædia of Heraldry: Or General Armory of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Comprising a Registry of All Armorial Bearings from the Earliest to the Present Time, Including the Late Grants by the College of Arms. H. G. Bohn.
• Burke, Bernard (1884). The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; comprising a registry of armorial bearings from the earliest to the present time. University of California Libraries. London: Harrison & Sons.
• Cokayne, G. E. (1889). The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom Extant, Extinct, or Dormant (1st ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.

Further reading

• Debe, Demetri D. (2009). "The Irish Career of Ulick Burke, Fifth Earl of Clanricarde and second Earl of Saint Albans 1641–1643". Irish Historical Studies. XXXVI (143): 1–18.
• Ó Siochrú, Micheál (2008). God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-24121-7.