His mother was an illegitimate daughter of Cormac na Haoine MacCarthy Reagh, 10th Prince of Carbery.
David and Ellen had a son: —and six daughters:[7] At the outbreak of the First Desmond Rebellion in 1569, his father, the 4th Viscount Buttevant, supported the rebels.
This rebellion ended when Fitz Maurice, the rebel leader, submitted to John Perrot, Lord President of Munster, at Kilmallock in 1573.
[15] In the subsequent confiscations of his estates, the friary in Buttevant, together with its glebe, passed into the hands of the poet, Edmund Spenser.
In the wake of the Battle of Kinsale, he was granted large estates in Munster which had been forfeited by the MacCarthy Reagh.