David de Barry, 5th Viscount Buttevant

David Fitz-James de Barry, 18th Baron Barry, 5th Viscount Buttevant (c. 1550 – 10 April 1617) was an Irish peer.

David, born about 1550, was the son of James de Barry, 4th Viscount Buttevant and the Lady Ellen MacCarthy Reagh, illegitimate daughter of Cormac na Haoine MacCarthy Reagh, 10th Prince of Carbery. He married firstly the Lady Ellen Roche, daughter of David Roche, 5th Viscount Roche of Fermoy, by the Lady Ellen Butler, daughter of James Butler, 10th Baron Dunboyne. From this marriage were born the Lady Margaret Barry who subsequently married Sir Dermot O'Shaughnessy as her first husband; the Lady Ellen Barry who subsequently married John Fitzgerald of Ballymaloe; the Lady Helen Barry who married Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde; and the Honourable David Fitz-David Barry who predeceased his father. He married secondly, Julia MacCarthy, daughter of Cormac MacCarthy and Joan Butler.

At the outbreak of the Desmond Rebellions, his father, the then Viscount Buttevant, supported the rebels and in the subsequent confiscations of his estates, the friary in Buttevant, together with its glebe, passed into the hands of the poet, Edmund Spenser.

He was noted for his long and bitter feud with Sir Florence MacCarthy, the MacCarthy Mór, whose loyalty to the Crown was always suspect. De Barry did great damage to his reputation by spreading rumours about MacCarthy's alleged acts of treason, in particular his links with Patrick O'Collun whom MacCarthy had once employed as a fencing master. In 1594 O'Collun was executed for conspiracy to kill Queen Elizabeth I. As a result, MacCarthy spent much of his later life in custody.

In 1601, during the Nine Years War the viscount sided with the new President of Munster, Sir George Carew. In the wake of the Battle of Kinsale, he was granted large estates in Munster which had been forfeited by the MacCarthys.

He died at Barryscourt Castle 10 April 1617. His title and estate passed to his grandson, who became 1st Earl of Barrymore in 1628.

Marriages and Issue

Children by Ellen Roche:

• Lady Margaret Barry married 1) Sir Dermot O'Shaughnessy; 2) Robert Dillon, 2nd Earl of Roscommon
• Lady Ellen Barry married John Fitzgerald of Ballymaloe
• Lady Helen Barry married 1) John 'Oge' Power; 2) in 1601, Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde; 3) in 1631, Thomas Somerset, 1st Viscount Somerset
• Hon. David Fitz-David Barry (d.c 1604) married Elizabeth Power, daughter of Richard, 4th Baron Power and had a posthumous son, David Barry, 1st Earl of Barrymore
• Lady Honora Barry married 1) Gerald FitzGerald; 2) Patrick Browne
• unnamed daughter married James Tobin
• Lady Catherine Barry married Richard Burke

Child by Julia MacCarthy:

• unnamed daughter

References

•  Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "Barry, David Fitzjames de". Dictionary of National Biography. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.