The House of Burgh (English: /bɜːr/; ber; French pronunciation: [buʁ]) or Burke (Irish: de Búrca; Latin: de Burgo) was an ancient Anglo-Norman and later Hiberno-Norman aristocratic dynasty which played a prominent role in the Norman invasion of Ireland, held the earldoms of Kent, Ulster, Clanricarde, and Mayo at various times, and provided queens consort of Scotland and Thomond and Kings of England via a matrilineal line.

Another descendant, Elizabeth, became the wife of King Edward III's son Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, and were ancestors of the Yorkist Plantagenet Kings of England; and through Edward IV's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, they are the ancestors of the current British Royal Family.

[2] The earliest documented generation of the family was represented in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries by four brothers: The grant of the Earldom of Kent to Hubert de Burgh was limited to himself and any male heirs born to his final wife, Princess Margaret of Scotland, but their only child was a daughter who was herself childless.

In 1286, he ravaged and subdued Connacht, and deposed the chief native king, (Brian O'Neill), substituting his own nominee.

Occasionally summoned to English parliaments, Richard spent most of his forty years of activity in Ireland, where he was the greatest noble of his day, usually fighting the natives or his Anglo-Norman rivals to expand his family's land.

The patent roll of 1290 shows that in addition to his lands in Ulster, Connacht and Munster, he held the Isle of Man, but later surrendered it to the king.

[15] William Donn married Maud of Lancaster (daughter of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster) and was appointed Lieutenant of Ireland (1331), but was murdered in his 21st year, leaving his only daughter, Elizabeth de Burgh, as the sole heiress not only of the de Burgh possessions but of the vast Clare estates.

[16] Elizabeth was married in childhood to Lionel, 1st Duke of Clarence (third son of Edward III) who was recognized in her right as Earl of Ulster.

[13] However, the Bruce would soon be separated from his English allies upon the murder of John Comyn, his greatest rival for the Scottish throne, in the "Chapel of the Greyfriars".

On the murder of William Donn de Burgh, 3rd Earl of Ulster (d.1333), his male kinsmen (who had a better right to the succession than his daughter, according to native Irish ideas), adopting Irish names and customs, became virtually native chieftains and succeeded in holding the bulk of the de Burgh territories.

[20] In 1543, the Mac William Uachtar (Upper Mac William) chief, Ulick na gCeann Burke (alias, MacWilliam) surrendered his lands in Connacht to Henry VIII, receiving these properties back to hold them, by English custom, as Earl of Clanricarde and Lord Dunkellin (1543).

This family, which changed its name from Burke to de Burgh (1752) and added that of Canning (1862), owned a vast estate in County Galway.

Tibbot (Theobald) MacWalter Kittagh Bourke, 21st (Lord of) Mac William Íochtar, fled to Spain where he was created Marquess of Mayo (1602) in the Spanish peerage.

[34] The original de Burgh coat of arms was adopted during the beginnings of the age of heraldry in the thirteenth century.

According to attributed legend, the arms originated during the Crusades while an ancestor of the de Burghs was fighting for King Richard the Lionheart.

[citation needed] The de Burgh claim to these arms may have been linked to the fact that Richard Óg de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster was the son of Aveline FitzJohn (d.1274), daughter of Sir John FitzGeoffrey (d.1258) and his wife Isabel Bigod (c. 1212–1250), daughter of Hugh Bigod, 3rd Earl of Norfolk (c. 1182–1225).