Helen MacCarty

Helen was probably born in the early 1640s,[lower-alpha 1] probably at Macroom Castle, County Cork, Ireland, her parents' habitual residence. She was the eldest daughter of Donough MacCarty and his wife Eleanor Butler. At the time of Helen's birth, her father was the Viscount Muskerry. He would later become Earl Clancarty. He belonged to the MacCarthy of Muskerry dynasty, a Gaelic Irish family that descended from the kings of Desmond.[2] Helen's mother was the eldest sister of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond.[3] Her mother's family, the Butler dynasty, was Old English and descended from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II in 1177.[4] Helen's parents were both Catholic. They had married before 1641.[5]

Helen was one of five children, three boys and two girls.[6]

She was a child while her father, Lord Muskerry, commanded the Confederates' Munster army and fought the Parliamentarians in the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland. He fought to the bitter end, surrendering Ross Castle near Killarney to Edmund Ludlow on 27 June 1652 and disbanding his 5000-strong army.[13][14] He was allowed to embark to Spain. He lost his estates in 1652 with the Cromwellian Act of Settlement.[15] Arriving in Spain he found that he was not welcome and returned to Ireland in 1653, where he was put on trial for the murder of English settlers in 1642. He was, however, acquitted.[16]

Helen, aged about ten, her mother, her sister Margaret, and her brother Justin had fled to France already some time before the fall of Ross Castle. Her mother lived with her sister Mary, Lady Hamilton, in the convent of the Feuillantines in Paris,[17] and Helen was sent to boarding school at the abbey of Cistercian nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs, near Versailles, together with her cousin Elizabeth Hamilton. This school had an excellent reputation and was ahead of its time by teaching in French rather than in Latin. She attended this school for seven or eight years.[18][19] The abbey also was a stronghold of Jansenism, a Catholic religious movement that insisted on earnestness and asceticism but which was later declared heretic for its stance on grace and original sin.[20] In 1658 her father was created Earl of Clancarty by Charles II in Brussels, where he was then in exile.[21]

At the Restoration Helen returned to England and Ireland with her family. Her father recovered his estates in 1660.[22] and was confirmed in their possession in the Act of Settlement 1662. Her brother Charles, Viscount Muskerry, as he was now, attended the court in Whitehall together with his wife, who was ridiculed by Elizabeth Hamilton who had been together with her at school.[23]

She soon married Sir John FitzGerald of Dromana (near Villierstown, in County Waterford), Lord of the Decies, as his second wife. His first wife had been Katherine Power, second daughter of John Power, 5th Baron Power, whom he had married in 1658 and who had died in 1660.[24] He had an only child, Catherine, from that marriage, who would marry and become the mother of John Villiers, 1st Earl Grandison.[25] Helen's first marriage was childless and lasted only one or two years as FitzGerald died in 1662.[1]

In 1665 her brother Charles, Lord Muskerry, was killed during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) in the Battle of Lowestoft, a naval engagement with the Dutch.[26]

Her second marriage was to William Burke, 7th Earl of Clanricarde,[27] which brought her the title of Countess of Clanricarde in the Peerage of Ireland.[28] Clanricarde already had sons from a previous marriage, two of whom would succeed him as the 8th[29] and the 9th earls.[30]

William and Helen had four children:[lower-alpha 2]

1. Ulick (1670–1691), created Viscount of Galway and slain at the Battle of Aughrim fighting for the Jacobites[31][lower-alpha 2]
2. Margaret (1673–1744), married first Bryan Magennis, 5th Viscount Iveagh and then Thomas Butler of Garryricken[32][lower-alpha 2]
3. William, died childless[33][lower-alpha 2]
4. Honora (1674–1698), married first Patrick Sarsfield and then the Duke of Berwick[34][35][lower-alpha 2]

She seems to have lived at Portumna Castle. At least it is known that her daughter Honora was born there.[34]

Her father, Lord Clancarty, died in London on 4 August 1665.[36] Her husband Clanricarde died in 1687[37] and was succeeded by his son Richard from his first marriage as the 8th Earl of Clanricarde. She was now about 46 years old. In 1689 her brother Justin lost the Battle of Newtownbutler against the Inniskilleners and was taken prisoner.[38] Her son Ulick was killed along with many senior Jacobite officers at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691.[39]

Helen married again, some time between 1687 and 1700, to Colonel Thomas Burke. The marriage was childless.[40] Her husband died in about 1719 and she died on 15 February 1721 at Kilcash Castle, the house of her daughter, Margaret.[41] Her substantial fortune was the subject of much legal dispute in succeeding generations.[42]

• Boulger, Demetrius Charles (1911). The Battle of the Boyne. London: Martin Secker.
• Burke, Jim (2005). A History Of Burke in Ireland. – Jim Burke!
• Burke, John (1832). A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire. 1 (4th ed.). London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. – Abdy to Hutchinson (for Clanricarde)
• Burke, Bernard (1866). A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire (New ed.). London: Harrison. (for MacCarty)
• Clark, Ruth (1921). Anthony Hamilton: his Life and Works and his Family. London: John Lane.
• Burke, Sir Bernard (1879). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland. 2 (6th ed.). London: Harrison. – L to Z
• Burke, Bernard (1949). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (99th ed.). London: Burke's Peerage Ltd.
• Cokayne, George Edward (1893). The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. 5 (1st ed.). London: George Bell and Sons. – L to M (for Mountcashel)
• Cokayne, George Edward (1913). Gibbs, Vicary (ed.). The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. 3 (2nd ed.). London: St Catherine Press. – Canonteign to Cutts (for Clancarty and Clanricarde)
• Cokayne, George Edward (1926). Gibbs, Vicary (ed.). The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. 5 (2nd ed.). London: St Catherine Press. – Eardley of Spalding to Goojerat (for Fingall)
• D'Alton, Rev. E. A. (1910). History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. 4. London: The Gresham Publishing Company. – 1649 to 1782
• Debrett, John (1828). Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 2 (17th ed.). London: F. C. and J. Rivington. – Scotland and Ireland
• Firth, Charles Harding (1894). The Memoirs of Henry Ludlow. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Flood, John (2020), Kilcash and the Butlers of Ormond: Conflict and Kinship from the Middle Ages to the Great Famine, Dublin: Geography Publications, ISBN 9780906602942
• Hamilton, Anthony (1888). Memoirs of Count Grammont. Translated by Walpole, Horace. Philadelphia: Gebbie & Co.
• Lodge, John (1789a). The Peerage of Ireland. 1. Dublin: James Moore. – Blood royal, dukes, earls (for Clanricarde)
• Lodge, John (1789b). The Peerage of Ireland. 4. Dublin: James Moore. – Viscounts (for Thurles)
• Murphy, John A. (1959). Justin MacCarthy, Lord Mountcashel, Commander of the Irish brigade in France. Cork: Cork University Press.
• O'Hart, John (1892). Irish Pedigrees: or, the Origin and Stem of the Irish Nation. 1 (5th ed.). Dublin: John Duffy & Co. – Irish Stem
• Ohlmeyer, Jane (2004). "MacCarthy, Donough, first earl of Clancarty (1594–1665)". In Matthew, Colin; Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 35. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 107–108. ISBN 0-19-861385-7.
• Pope Alexander VII (15 February 1665). Bulle de N. S. P. le Pape Alexandre VII contre les cinq propositions extraites du livre de Jansenius (in French).
• Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin (1878). Port-Royal (in French). 2 (4th ed.). Paris: Hachette.
• Seaward, Paul (2004). "Charles II". In Matthew, Henry Colin Gray.; Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 11. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 122–145. ISBN 0-19-861361-X. (for Charles II)
• Seccombe, Thomas (1893). "MACCARTHY or MACCARTY, DONOUGH". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 34. London: Smith Elder & Co. pp. 436–438.
• Smyth, Constantine (1839). Chronicle of the Law Officers of Ireland. London: Henry Butterworth. (for Table of reigns)
• Wauchope, Piers (2004). "Maccarthy, Justin, first Viscount Mountcashel (1643–1694)". In Matthew, Colin; Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 35. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 111–112. ISBN 0-19-861385-7.
• Webb, Alfred (1878). "MacCarty, Donough, Viscount Muskerry, Earl of Clancarty". Compendium of Irish Biography. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. p. 303, right column, line 35.