He was the son of The 4th Earl of Clanricarde by his wife Frances Walsingham. Ulick's father was from an Anglo-Norman family who had been long settled in the west of Ireland and had become Gaelicised. Although during the early sixteenth century the family had rebelled against the Crown on several occasions, Ulick's father had been a strong supporter of Queen Elizabeth I. He fought on the Queen's side during Tyrone's Rebellion, notably during the victory at the Battle of Kinsale, where he was wounded. After the war he married the widow of The 2nd Earl of Essex, a recent commander in Ireland, who was the daughter of the English Secretary of State and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. In 1622, Ulick married his only wife Anne Compton, the daughter of The 1st Earl of Northampton and his wife, Elizabeth Spencer. They had a single child, Margaret Burgh, who married Viscount Muskerry. Ulick was summoned to the House of Lords as Lord Burgh in 1628, and succeeded his father as 5th Earl of Clanricarde in 1635. In 1636, he inherited Somerhill House on the death of his father. He was a staunch opponent of the policies of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, The 1st Earl of Strafford, who had attempted to seize much of the great Burke inheritance for the Crown; there was also personal ill-feeling between the two men since the dispute was thought by many to have hastened the death of Ulick's elderly father. He sat in the Short Parliament of 1640 and attended King Charles I in the Scottish expedition. Charles, unlike Strafford, liked and trusted Lord Clanricarde.. Which happened first, Ulick became the 5th Earl of Clanricarde or he sat in the Short Parliament?