Helen MacCarty

Lady Helen MacCarty, also styled as Helen FitzGerald and Helen Burke, Countess of Clanricarde, was an Irish aristocrat of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Helen was the daughter of Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty and Eleanor Butler, claiming descent from both the Old English and Gaelic traditions. She was raised as a Roman Catholic. She had three husbands. Her first was Sir John FitzGerald whom she married in the 1660s. Her second marriage was to the County Galway landowner William Burke, 7th Earl of Clanricarde, which brought her the title of countess in the Peerage of Ireland. Amongst her children with Clandricarde were Ulick Burke, 1st Viscount Galway, who died fighting for the Jacobite cause at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691, and Lady Honora Burke. Honora was married twice, to the Irish Jacobite hero Patrick Sarsfield and James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, a son of James II. Another daughter Margaret Burke, married Bryan Magennis, Viscount Iveagh. Helen's third marriage was to Thomas Burke. She lived into the 1720s.