Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde

Ulick MacRichard Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, 5th Earl of Clanricarde, 2nd Earl of St Albans PC (Ire) ( ; 1604 – July 1657), styled Lord Dunkellin 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.

Birth and origins

Ulick was the son of the 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 I. 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 the 2nd Earl of Essex, a recent commander in Ireland, who was the daughter of the English Secretary of State and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham.

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

Somerhill was sequestered by Parliament in 1645, following the Battle of Naseby.

Arms

Ancestry