Clodagh Finn: Diary of an Irishwoman — Honora Burke, the overlooked wife of Patrick Sarsfield

There’s a very real chance now that excavations to repatriate the remains of Sarsfield, the dashing cavalry commander and first Lord Lucan, will begin as early as this summer, pending permission from the Walloon authorities in Belgium.

Expect to hear a lot more about the Sarsfield Homecoming Project and the repatriation of the man “famed in song and story for his swashbuckling role in the Williamite wars”, as he was colourfully described on RTÉ radio earlier this week.

It’s an apt description. As Dr Guyon, whose painstaking research identified his probable grave in Huy in Belgium, says: “His entire life story is like a novel.”

Here’s to discovering new chapters in the life of the charismatic soldier and leader who once narrowly escaped prison after abducting two wealthy women.

What fascinates this column, however, is how much light Dr Guyon has cast on the women in Patrick Sarsfield’s life, in particular his wife Honora Burke.

He began his intensive research when appointed Honorary French Consul of Limerick in 2019 with the aim of exploring — and deepening — the links between Ireland and France. The fact that he has pinpointed with a large degree of certainty where Patrick Sarsfield is buried will generate much interest over the coming months.

Pending permission, Irish company Aegis Archaeology could begin excavations in the back garden of a townhouse in Huy, Belgium, once the site of Saint Martin church, this summer.

Keep an eye on the headlines. It really will be breaking news.

What might not make the headlines, however, is the fact that the French Consul has also uncovered an unpublished document on the burial of Patrick Sarsfield’s wife, as well as other papers that offer an unrivalled insight into her short life.

The Flight of the Wild Geese is a familiar story, but it is one that is so often told in terms of battles, military careers, and political allegiances.

It is illuminating, then, to hear more about the women relegated to the footnotes, such as Honora Burke. She was about 15 when she married Patrick Sarsfield, probably at the family seat in Portumna Castle, Galway. It wasn’t long before the tumult of war forced her, along with the other Sarsfield women, to leave Ireland for the safety of France. There, they settled into life at the court of the exiled Stuart King of England, James ll, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris.

Flight of the Wild Geese

Honora’s husband followed her after the Treaty of Limerick in 1691 when the Irish Jacobite army left in their thousands for France in what became known as the Flight of the Wild Geese.

Meanwhile, contemporary diarists tell us that Honora took to court life with great ease. She was said to be charming, entertaining, and highly fashionable, a fact recalled last year when the Limerick Bastille Day Wild Geese Festival and the Holman Lee Agency named the Honora French and Irish Sustainable Couture Show after her.

She was celebrated in her day too. As Loïc Guyon explains: “The Duke of Saint-Simon wrote that she was ‘beautiful, touching, made to be painted, a nymph’… [while] Dangeau wrote that she was ‘a pretty woman, that everyone liked, and very fashionable’.”

Later, her second son James described her as a woman who was lively and very fond of dancing. “There was no fête in which she was not present, & it is she who introduced into the Court of France the fashion of English country dancing,” he wrote.

The descriptions, though certainly true, obscure another side of the story which has only just come to light thanks to Dr Guyon

The head of French Studies at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick found documents that show Honora Burke and Patrick Sarsfield’s first and only child nearly died shortly after birth. He was given a “simplified emergency baptism” in his own home 11 days after he was born on March 30, 1693 because he was in such great danger of dying.

A month later, however, he had recovered. There must have been much relief and celebration during the baptism ceremony proper, where none other than the “high & powerful Prince Jacques, Prince of Wales” was listed as godfather, according to the parish records of Saint-Germaine-en-Laye.

Any happiness was short-lived, though, because three months later, between 7 and 11 August, Patrick Sarsfield died in Huy following the battle of Landen/Neerwinden.

Honora Burke was a widow at 19 with a four-month-old baby in her care. It was once thought that she went to Huy in Belgium to mourn her husband, but there is no evidence to suggest that she left the royal court near Paris. Why would she when she had the support of her mother-in-law Anne Sarsfield and her sisters-in-law Frances and Anne who were also living there?

What happened next, however, is well-documented.

As Dr Guyon writes: “On 23 March 1695, she married the Duke of Berwick, a natural son of King James II, in Montmartre. As the memorialists of the time reported, this was truly a love marriage.”

At first, King James and his wife, Mary of Modena, were against the wedding as they didn’t consider Honora a good match, but when a son (also called James) was born the following year, they were happy to act as godparents.

The couple was also clearly held in high esteem by King Louis XlV who gave them an apartment at his royal residence in Marly.

Honora Burke, however, did not have long to enjoy any happiness that her circumstances might have brought her. Less than a year after the birth of her second son, it was noted that she was suffering from consumption.

She had also just had a miscarriage and her husband had taken her to Pézenas, in the south of France, near Montpellier, to recover. It was not to be. She died there on January 16, 1698, aged 22.

We now know for certain that her remains were buried, at her request, in the Convent of the English Benedictine Nuns of Pontoise, north-west of Paris.

While the spotlight might be on Dr Guyon’s search for Patrick Sarsfield’s body, he also published a little-known manuscript that shows his wife’s final resting place. The Archbishop of Armagh (Primate of Ireland), the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Perth, Milord Mount Leinster (Anne Sarsfield’s husband) “and many lords & ladies of the Court of England” were at her funeral.

Unlike her husband, any possibility of recovering her remains is slight. Coincidentally, renovation work is ongoing at that Pontoise site, but it seems the crypt of the church is empty.

Nonetheless, how wonderful to have this account of Honora Burke’s short but eventful life.