Following the defeat of the Jacobites, O'Rourke followed James II into exile in France in the Flight of the Wild Geese.
[1] In 1727, James Francis Edward Stuart appointed O'Rouke as his ambassador to the imperial court in Vienna and made him Baron O'Rourke in the Jacobite peerage.
On 31 July 1731 he was further made Viscount Breffney in reference to his ancestors' rule over the Kingdom of Breifne.
O'Rouke held the Jacobite diplomatic post in Vienna until his death in 1743.
[2] O'Rourke married Catharine Diana de Beauveau, sister to the Prince of Craon, but left no issue.