This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Darren McGettigan. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 1560 (circa), Ireland
Died: 1627 (circa)
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Lady Mary Ny Vryen (Lady Mary Ní Briain)
Brian na Múrtha’s second wife, Mary Burke (c.1560–c.1627), whom he married c.1575–6, was a remarkable woman. She was known throughout her life as Lady Mary Burke and also as Lady Mary Ny Vryen (Lady Mary Ní Briain), after her mother. She was a committed supporter of Queen Elizabeth, and shortly after the birth of her son Tadhg she left O’Rourke because of his rebellious activities, taking the boy with her. This crisis apparently had a very bad effect on Mary, as her father, on 23 June 1577, wrote to the lord deputy that she ‘was on the point of death’ (CSPI 1574–85, 107). However, she recovered and soon sought to marry Sir John Fitzgerald of Desmond (d. 1582), the brother of the earl of Desmond. He was killed in 1582, and she married instead Theobald Burke, the eldest son of William Burke, baron of Castleconnell, a family which had extensive estates in Co. Limerick. The couple had four sons, John, Richard, Thomas, and Theobald, in a very short period, and it is possible that two of them were twins. Burke was killed in 1579 in a skirmish with the Geraldine leader James fitz Maurice Fitzgerald , who also died in the fight.
Upon the death of her husband, Mary fought hard to secure the rights of her family. In 1580 she was granted the custody of Burke’s lands and also the custody of their son and heir John. Two years later she complained to the Irish privy council that ‘She and her tenants [were] utterly beggared by the rebels’. She stated that she had to live in the town of Limerick and sought ‘payment of the head money for killing James Fitzmaurice’. In 1582 she was living in ‘utter poverty and misery in Limerick’, but in July was paid 1,000 marks ‘in consideration of the killing of the traitor James Fitzmaurice’ (CSPI, 1574–85, 375, 388). Mary remained in Limerick, where her son Tadhg O’Rourke was being educated in 1592 ‘by his mother’s order’. Tadhg, on account of his mother’s influence, remained loyal to the English interest in Ireland throughout the Nine Years War, and in 1603 was granted three castles and 445 quarters of land in Co. Leitrim by James I.
Mary’s second family also remained loyal to the English interest in Ireland. Her son John died in infancy and Richard and Thomas were killed in 1600 at Bunbristy Bridge, near the town of Limerick, by Hugh O’Neill’s mercenary captain Dermot O’Connor. Her surviving son, Theobald, was much favoured by James I ‘in consideration of the services of his father . . . and also . . . of his brothers’. James granted Theobald extensive lands all over Ireland and in 1618 created him ‘lord Burke, baron of Brittas’ (Irish Patent Rolls of James I, 343). Mary married, thirdly, John Moore , of Bryes in Co. Mayo. In 1611 they both made provision for Moore’s own family when her husband granted his lands to Donough O’Brien , 4th earl of Thomond, ‘to hold for the use of John Moore the younger’, Moore and Mary reserving the castle of Clonbigney and six quarters of land in Co. Mayo for their own use ‘during their lives’ (ibid., 581). It is uncertain when Mary died, although it may have been in the late 1620s. Her grandson Hugh O’Rourke, son of Tadhg, was confined to London but escaped in 1629 with the daughter of the earl of Tyrconnell .