Overview
Sir Uilleag (Ulick) de Burgh (Burke), 1st Clanricarde or Mac William Uachtar (; ; ; ; ; died 1343 or 1353) was an Irish chieftain and noble who was leader of one of the three factions who fought the Burke Civil War in the 1330s. By the end of the conflict he had established himself and his descendants as Clanricarde, also known as Mac William Uachtar (Upper Mac William), independent lords of Galway. He was succeeded by his son, Richard Óg Burke, 2nd Clanricarde (d.1387).
Family background
There are differing views as to Burke's ancestry.
According to the Book of the Burkes (Historia et Genealogia Familiae de Burgo), a genealogical manuscript made in the 1570s for Seaán mac Oliver Bourke, 17th Mac William Íochtar (d.1580) of the Burkes of County Mayo, Burke was a son of Richard an Fhorbhair mac William de Burgh, a natural son of William Laith de Burgh (d.1324), who was a son of Richard Óg de Burgh, illegitimate son of William de Burgh (d.1206) original founder of the de Burgh/Burke dynasty in Ireland. The same descent is given by Duald MacFirbis in his Leabhar na nGenealach (Book of the Genealogies), mostly compiled in 1649-50, and its revised abridgement the Cuimre na nGenealach (Binding of the Genealogies) of 1666. This is the ancestry presented by John O'Hart in his Irish pedigrees; or, The origin and stem of the Irish nation (1876), and in the Oxford A New History of Ireland (1984), where the authors write "The origins of the Clanricard line are not absolutely proven, but the descent given is that in the best Irish genealogical sources and is not contradicted by contemporary sources."
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