His successful life followed, and usefully illustrates, the difficult transition for Irish aristocrats from the traditional Gaelic world during the Tudor conquest of Ireland.

Tibbot's Irish ancestors started with William de Burgh who was granted the overlordship of Connacht in 1215 by John Lackland.

His mother was the pirate queen Gráinne O'Malley (1530–1603) and his father was Richard "the Iron" Bourke, 18th Mac William Íochtar (d.1583), who was her second husband, and a senior member of the Lower MacWilliam Burke clan.

From 1541 the new Kingdom of Ireland founded by Henry VIII attempted to involve and include the self-governing chiefdoms by the process of surrender and regrant.

After the first Desmond Rebellion (1569–76) the Dublin administration decided to apply the process in Connacht to the autonomous chiefs such as the Lower MacWilliam Bourke, but with considerable difficulty.

If the clan adopted surrender and regrant, Richard would lose his expected chieftainship, and Shane's son would inherit under the English-law doctrine of primogeniture.

Richard was now recognised as an autonomous clan chief by the Crown, uniquely without having to adopt surrender and regrant, in a deed dated 16 April 1581.

[5] On the approach to the Nine Years' War in early 1593, conflict had broken out between the Presidency of Connaught and Hugh Roe O'Donnell of Tyrconnell and Brian Óg O'Rourke of West Breifne.

The timing of this visit subsequently made a huge difference to him, as the Nine Years' War was starting; as a result The O'Donnell arranged in 1595 for another MacWilliam Burke cousin, Tibbot Kittagh, to replace him as clan chief.

Tibbot soon regained his position in Mayo, and unsurprisingly would not join O'Donnell and his main ally Hugh O'Neill in the war.

His own tenants paid rent in kind under the metayage system, known in Ireland as "cuttings and spendings", delivering him about a quarter or third of each crop.

The Anglo-Spanish War (1625–30) started soon after the accession of Charles I, and yet again he and his son Miles were charged with planning a Spanish-supported Catholic revolt, and were cleared.

Murphy concealed himself after nightfall in Lord Mayo’s hall on Christmas Eve, and at an auspicious moment poured forth his very soul in words and music, conjuring him by the birth of the Prince of Peace, to grant him forgiveness in a strain of the finest and most natural pathos that ever distilled from the pen of man.

Mayo whose valor sweeps the field And swells the trump of Fame; May Heaven's high power thy champion shield, And deathless be his name.

bid the exiled Bard return, Too long from safety fled; No more in absence let him mourn Till earth shall hide his head.