Barry, David Fitz-David, first Earl of Barrymore 1605-1642, was a posthumous child of David, son of David Fitzjames de Barry, Viscount Buttevant [qv.]. The young lord was but twelve years old when he succeeded to the estates of his grandfather. At the age of sixteen he married the eldest daughter of the Earl of Cork, and in the following year inherited the estates of his great-uncle, Richard, who, because he was deaf and dumb, had been superseded in the title by his younger brother, David. After Charles I came to the throne, he advanced Viscount Buttevant by privy seal (30 Nov. 1627) to the dignity of earl of Barrymore. In 1634 he took his seat in parliament, and served against the Scots in 1639. When the Irish rebellion broke out in 1641, he strongly supported the royal cause, and garrisoned his castle of Shandon. Being asked by the insurgents to take the command of their army, he replied, I will first take an offer from my brother, Dungarvan, to be hangman-general at Youghal. Lord Dungarvan was a son of the Earl of Cork, who had stationed him with troops in Youghal for the defence of that town against the rebels. When Barrymore received a threat that his house of Castlelyons would be destroyed, he declared that he would defend it while one stone stood upon another, being resolved to live and die a faithful subject of the English crown. In May 1642 he and his brother-in-law pursued the Condons, took the castle of Ballymac-Patrick (now Careysville), and rescued some hundred women and children. This was the first successful attempt of the English in that part of the country; but the victory was deeply stained by the execution, on the spot, of all the rebels taken prisoners, fifty-one in number. An account of this expedition of Lord Barrymore was published in the form of a letter (9 May 1642) from the Earl of Cork at Dublin to his wife in London. Two months later Barrymore took Cloghlea castle, near Kilworth. After this he was joined with Lord Inchiquin in a commission for the civil government of Munster. On 3 September following, he headed a regiment maintained at his own charges at the battle of Liscarrol, in which his brother-in-law, Lord Kynalmeaky, was killed. Barrymore was, as is supposed, wounded, for he died on the 29th of the same month of September, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, and was buried in Lord Cork's tomb at Youghal. He left his widow with two sons and two daughters ill provided for, and the Earl of Cork appealed to the king on their behalf. Charles, whose own troubles were thickening upon him, wrote from Oxford that the lord justice should grant his wardship and marriage to the mother without exacting any fine or rent for the crown.

Sources:
     Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, i. 295-8
     Brit. Mus. Cat.

Contributor: R. H. [Robert Harrison]

Published: 1885