Sir Brian O'Rourke was lawfully married to Lady Mary Burke, and her only son Teig had a grant of the family estates in the next reign. But he had an elder son by the wife of John O'Crean, a merchant of Sligo, and it was to him that the chiefry was likely to fall. The work of chastising O'Rourke was entrusted by Bingham to Clanricarde, and it seems to have been a labour of love, either because the Earl resented wrongs done to his sister, or because he hated her former misdeeds, or because he felt that his nephew's case had some resemblance to what his own had been. With thirty horsemen and some kerne of his own, and two regular companies, he set out from Elphin and marched to Ballinafad, where news came that O'Rourke was at his house near Lough Gill. Clanricarde asked Captain Mordaunt if his soldiers could go another fourteen miles the same night, and was told that they would do their best. The daylight overtook them at some distance from O'Rourke's house, and they had to fight after their long night's march. The O'Rourkes fell back into a bog, and Clanricarde insisted on following them with his horse. He was dismounted, and a spur torn from his heel. The bullets flew thickly about him, and Mordaunt's men came up only just in time, his gallantry exciting the admiration of the English officers. O'Rourke was never able to make head again, but he probably fancied himself safe in his own country. When the Lord Deputy held sessions at Sligo a few months later, he refused to attend, on the ground that the Binghams had something to do with them. The result was that Fitzwilliam accepted Bingham's policy as against O'Rourke, though he was always ready, and often with very good reason, to testify against the Governor's harshness and against the tyranny of his brothers, cousins, and followers.[203] [Sidenote: Bingham subdues the Burkes.]