Background
He was the son of Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde, by his wife Frances Walsingham.
He was the son of Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde, by his wife Frances Walsingham.
Clanricarde was a Catholic Royalist, who had overall command of the Irish forces during the later stages of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Ulick"s father was from an Anglo-Norman family who had been long settled in the west of Ireland and become Gaelicised. 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 Elizabeth I. He fought on the Queen"s side during Tyrone"s Rebellion, notably during the victory at Battle of Kinsale where he was wounded.
They had a single child, Margaret Burgh who married Charles MacCarty, Viscount Muskerry.
Ulick was summoned to the House of Lords as Lord Burgh in 1628, and succeeded his father as 5th Earl in 1635. In 1636, he inherited Somerhill House on the death of his father.
He sat in the Short Parliament of 1640 and attended Charles I in the Scottish expedition. Charles, unlike Strafford, liked and trusted Ulick.
Somerhill was sequestered by Parliament in 1645, following the Battle of Naseby.
He did not join the Catholic Confederate Ireland, but instead helped to broker a military alliance between the Confederates and English Royalists. Only a few months later however his army was wiped out during the battle of Meelick Island. Burke was a skillful diplomat but not a great soldier.
He was also widely regarded as a man whose actions were governed almost entirely by self-interest.
In 1652, he made peace with the victorious Oliver Cromwell. He lost his lands in the Acting of Settlement 1652 but his heirs regained them after the Restoration of Charles II in the Acting of Settlement 1662.