the Irish forces of Munster for Charles I, and was ‘very active in the rebellion.’ He forfeited all his estates in 1641, though most of these were restored on the Restoration, was among the last to lay down his arms in the final conflict, being defeated by Ludlow in Kerry in 1652, and obliged to surrender his last stronghold, Ross Castle, on 27 June; and was subsequently tried for his life on the charge of having been the cause of the murder of several Englishmen near Cork (Ludlow, Memoirs, 1698, p. 440 sq.) He was acquitted, and withdrew to the continent with a considerable number of retainers. By patent dated from Brussels, 27 Nov. 1658, he was created Earl of Clancarty. He died in London on 5 Aug. 1665. He had by his wife, Eleanor, sister of James, first duke of Ormonde, three sons: Charles, Callaghan, and Justin [q. v.] The eldest, a favourite of the Duke of York, entered the navy, was killed at the victory of Solebay (2 June), some two months previous to his father's death, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 22 June 1665 (Chester, Westm. Abbey Regist.; cf. Pepys, Diary, ii. 407; for his widow, Lady Muskerry, see Hamilton, Grammont, ed. Vizetelly, i. 159 sq.) The earldom devolved on his infant son, Charles, but he died early in 1666, and was succeeded by his uncle, Callaghan. The latter was on the point of taking priest's orders in France, but on the extinction of his elder brother's line he emerged from the convent, turned protestant, and married Elizabeth (d. 1698), daughter of George Fitzgerald, sixteenth earl of Kildare, by whom he had four daughters and a son, Donogh, the subject of this memoir.
Donogh's mother was left his guardian on his father's death on 21 Nov. 1676, and, being a strong protestant, she entrusted his education to Dr. Fell, dean of Christ Church. Unfortunately for the young earl and his family, his uncle, Justin Maccarthy, viscount Mountcashel [q. v.], managed to decoy him from Oxford by means of a letter which he got Charles II to write to Dr. Fell (Burnet, Own Time, 1823, ii. 446). Fell was only too compliant. Clancarty was brought to London, under the pretext of being shown the ‘diversions of the town at Christmas time,’ and in 1684, when he was barely sixteen years old, his uncle, without the knowledge of his mother and her friends, procured his marriage with Elizabeth, second daughter of Robert Spencer, second earl of Sunderland. The ceremony took place in Westminster Abbey on 31 Dec., and the young earl immediately afterwards set out for Ireland. There in less than a year he changed his religion, and on the accession of James II was given a troop of horse. Under his uncle's influence he warmly espoused James's cause, joined Mountcashel in his summary operations against Bandon, and with his troop perpetrated not a few outrages upon the disaffected of the district. He is said to have hung up one man by his hair, while in the case of a poor butcher at Mallow who had offended him, he caused his men to toss him in a blanket, an operation which they performed with fatal results to their victim. The butcher's family subsequently charged the earl with the murder, and were granted a tract of land out of his forfeited estate (ib. i. 167 n.; ‘Fleming Papers,’ Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. pt. vii. p. 271; cf. Macaulay and King, State of Ireland, p. 33). Though under age the young earl took his seat in the Irish House of Lords by royal dispensation in May 1689.
When James II landed at Kinsale in 1689, Clancarty received him at his house there, was made a lord of the bedchamber, and subsequently colonel of the 4th regiment of foot (Graham, Ireland Preserved, p. 276). This regiment was later called after him ‘Clancarty's.’ He accompanied James to Derry, and on the night of his arrival there, ‘flushed with wine and encouraged by one of the old Irish prophecies, he made a furious, and nearly successful, attack upon the “Butcher's Gate”’ (Graham, Siege, pp. 96–9). He took part in the defence of Cork, and was made prisoner on its capitulation in October 1690, and sent to the Tower (Luttrell, ii. 112; Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. App. pt. v. p. 146). Shortly after this event John Evelyn ‘went to the Countess of Clancarty (the earl's mother) to condole with her concerning her debauched and dissolute son, who had done so much mischief in Ireland’ (Diary, ii. 210). The earl's estates were forfeited; but, upon a petition to the House of Lords from the dowager countess, were charged with a liberal provision for her and her daughters (House of Lords' MSS.) While still in the Tower MacCarthy was named by James successor to Lord Lucan in command of the second troop of horse-guards. In April 1692 he was removed to the Savoy ‘for the convenience of new comers,’ but returned to the Tower, where, however, his confinement does not seem to have been very strict, as on 27 Oct. 1694 he managed to escape, leaving his periwig block dressed up in his bed, with the inscription, ‘The block must answer for me.’ Narrowly escaping recapture at Ostend, he found his way to St. Germains, and commanded his troop in France until the peace of Ryswick (1697). When in the autumn of 1697 it was decided that James's horse-guards
