Charles MacCarty, Viscount Muskerry (1633 or 1634 – 1665), called Cormac in Irish, commanded a royalist battalion at the Battle of the Dunes during the interregnum.

He was heir apparent to Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty but was killed at the age of 31 at the Battle of Lowestoft, a sea-fight against the Dutch, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and thus never succeeded to the earldom.

[29][30][31] Around that time, anticipating the loss of Macroom or because of it, his father sent Cormac's mother, sisters and youngest brother to security in France.

[32] After Rinuccini's departure, his father took up arms again to fight the Cromwellians but was defeated in 1651 by Broghill at Knocknaclashy[33][34] and surrendered his last stronghold, Ross Castle, to Edmund Ludlow in 1652.

MacCarty's regiment was part of the garrison of Condé-sur-l'Escaut when the town was taken by the Spanish shortly after their victory over the French at the Battle of Valenciennes on 16 July 1656.

[4][3] King Charles II, in exile in the Spanish Netherlands since March 1656,[37] sent the Marquess of Ormond, MacCarty's uncle, to ask him to join him with his regiment.

[43] His father, the 1st Earl of Clancarty, had meanwhile returned to Ireland and recovered his estates by virtue of Charles II "Gracious Declaration" of the 30 November 1660.

[44] His father sat as Lord Clancarty in the Irish Parliament of 1661–1666 and was part oif a committee that organised a gift of £30,000 for the Duke of Ormond.

[45][46] In 1660 or 1661 Muskerry married Margaret Bourke, a rich heiress, the only child of Ulick Burke, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde and Lady Anne Compton.

Charles and Margaret had a girl and a boy: Lord and Lady Muskerry frequently attended the court at Whitehall.

[54] The Mémoires du comte de Gramont (Chapter 7) tell how Elizabeth Hamilton made fun of Lady Muskerry by making her believe that the King had invited her to a masquerade and that she had to disguise herself as a Babylonian woman.

[65] Her widower made a scandalous and bigamous marriage to Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland, former royal mistress of Charles II.