O'Rourke Family History / O'Rourke Coat of Arms



In mediaeval times the O'Rourkes were one of the great princely families of Ireland, being Lords of Breffny and providing more than one King of Connacht in the period prior to the Norman invasion. At various times their territory expanded or contracted largely because of the long standing rivalry between the O'Rourkes and O'Reillys in Breffny. At its widest it extended from Kells, in Co.. Meath, to Sligo. After Cromwell, like all great Gaelic families its star declined. many of its ablest members left the country to become valued leaders, particularly military leaders, in European countries: their descendants are still (or were till Russian Communism upset the old order) among the important families in Russia and Poland. Joseph O'Rourke, Prince O'Rourke in the Russian aristocracy, was General-in-Chief of the Russian Empire in 1700 and Patrick Count O'Rourke was a distinguished member of the same service in the middle of the last century, while two Owen O'Rourkes, both Counts, served Maria Teresa of Austria from 1750 to 1780. Of those who went to France the most noteworthy were Col. Count John O'Rourke (c. 1705-1786) and Father Manus O'Rourke (1660-1741) who during a lifetime as an exile wrote voluminously in the Irish language. With a great sept like this, of course, such emigration, though it impoverished their prestige at home, had little effect on numbers, and the Rourkes and O'Rourkes (including such variant spellings as Rorke and Roark) constitute a body of population sufficiently large to find a place in the one hundred most numerous names in Ireland. The bulk of these, as might be expected, are to be found in the counties comprising the old territory of Breffny (I.e Cavan, Leitrim and part of the adjoining counties). Apart from those O'Rourkes who distinguished themselves in continental armies and other forms of foreign service, there have been many notable Irishmen of the name. Earliest of these is Tiernan O'Rourke, Prince of Breffny (killed in battle 1172), who is best known on account of the epoch-making events which followed the carrying off of his wife Dervogilla by Dermot MacMorrogh; Brian O'Rourke, inaugurated Chief of the Name in 1564, had a most romantic career, ending, still without knowing a word of the English language, on the scaffold in London; his son Brain O'Rourke, also Chief of the Name, was equally hostile to the English but died a natural death in 1604. In a very different sphere Edmund O'Rourke (1814-1879) may be mentioned; he was in his day famous under the pseudonym of Edmund Falconer, as a dramatist and actor-manager. It is probable that William Michael Rooke (1794-1847), the Dublin-born composer, came of a family of Rourkes whose name had been corrupted to Rooke.