The O'Rourke family were originally members of the Jacobite Irish Nobility; they fled Ireland after the defeat by the Protestant Williamites at the Battle of the Boyne in 1691. The majority of the family moved as refugees to France during this time. The O'Rourkes were a prominent Gaelic aristocratic family who lost lands in the Elizabethan and Cromwellian conquests, and several family members emigrated to Russia. The family members were descendants of ninth-century kings of Connacht and ruled the ancient kingdom of Breifne in the northwest of the country until they were unseated during the Elizabethan conquest in the sixteenth century.