Cole was a member of county Fermanagh’s dominant political family and a staunch Conservative. However, his tenure as the representative of the family borough of Enniskillen coincided with the relative decline of the political influence of his father, the 2nd earl of Enniskillen, and he was hard-pressed to hold his seat at two general elections before retiring in 1868.
Cole was the youngest surviving son of Lord Enniskillen, who as lord lieutenant of Fermanagh had long held the ‘paramount influence’ in the county.1The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 59. His brothers had sat for the county and for the family borough of Enniskillen where, following a successful tenure of the seat by James Whiteside, the Conservative interest became divided between several competing interests.2Freeman’s Journal, 18 Feb. 1859.
Cole did not enter any profession, and apart from involving himself in local administration and politics,3Cole sat on the board of superintendence of the county gaol at Enniskillen: PP 1847 [805] xxix. 151, at 47. attending local Conservative meetings and, in his capacity as high sheriff, presiding at a meeting to call for the revision of the Irish poor law in February 1843, took little part in upholding his family’s parliamentary interest in Fermanagh.4Earl of Belmore, Parliamentary Memoirs of Fermanagh and Tyrone from 1613 to 1885 (1887), 90; Standard, 30 Oct. 1837; Freeman’s Journal, 11 Feb. 1843. Nevertheless, when in February 1859 James Whiteside resigned his seat at Enniskillen, Cole was brought forward at the ensuing by-election. At this point the Conservative interest in the borough began to fragment and he joined an initial field of five candidates, all of whom were ‘Derbyites and true Blues of the Fermanagh stamp’.5The Times, 19 Feb. 1859. However, despite having done ‘little to secure his election’ he was returned after polling more than the aggregate of the votes for his two opponents.6The Times, 15 Feb. 1859; Belfast News-letter, 21 Feb. 1859. After taking his seat on 14 March, he immediately voted against the abolition of church rates, 15 Mar., and divided in favour of Lord Derby’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859.
At the 1859 general election, Cole was returned without opposition, and, unsurprisingly given his father’s position as the grand master of the Orange order in Ireland, adhered to ‘high Conservative and Orange principles’.7Freeman’s Journal, 1 Feb., 4 May 1859. At Westminster he loyally supported Lord Derby, and voted against the second reading of the Maynooth College bill, 20 July 1860, and for Whalley’s subsequent anti-Maynooth motions, 4 June 1861, 6 May 1862.8Freeman’s Journal, 1 Feb. 1859. Staunchly opposed to the Liberal government, he joined the small minority which voted for Stansfield’s resolution on the reduction of national expenditure, 3 June 1862, but backed Gladstone’s motion for funds to purchase the exhibition buildings at Kensington, 2 July 1863. He attended a meeting at Lord Salisbury’s residence to consider Palmerston’s Danish-German policy in June 1864, and backed Disraeli’s subsequent motion of censure against the government, 8 July 1864.9The Times, 29 June 1864.
Cole voted in the minority for Cairns’s amendment to the Roman Catholic oath bill which required MPs to abjure ‘any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment’, 12 June 1865, and, having convinced the Belfast News-letter that he was ‘always at his post, and always on the right side’, narrowly overcame a testing challenge from a local Liberal at the 1865 general election.10Belfast News-letter, 1, 12, 13, 17 July 1865. He divided for the reduction of malt duty, 17 Apr. 1866, and in that year sat on the Cheltenham election committee.11PP 1866 (496) lvi. 537 [18]. He attended a meeting of the Conservative party at Downing Street to consider parliamentary reform, 6 May 1867, and consistently divided against all Liberal amendments to the government’s reform bill.12Belfast News-letter, 8 May 1867. He voted for Candlish’s amendment to the oaths and offices bill to disbar Catholics from the office of Irish viceroy, 9 Apr. 1867, and divided against Sir John Gray’s motion for the status of the established church in Ireland to be reconsidered, 7 May 1867. He also divided against William Gladstone’s subsequent motions on the issue in April and May 1868.
Cole is not known to have sat on any select committees and in June 1868 made his sole known contribution to debate, when he successfully moved for the insertion of a clause into the Irish burial bill prohibiting the interment of ‘any person not belonging to the United Church of England and Ireland’ in any graveyard where no such burial had previously taken place, provided that an alternative burial ground was available within the parish.13Hansard, 10 June 1868, vol. 192, c. 1384. An opponent of the ballot, he voted to defend the voting rights of freemen and uphold the representation of Dublin University and Portarlington under the Irish reform bill, and divided in favour of maintaining a £12 county franchise, 18 June 1868.
With his family’s interest in Enniskillen once more under challenge, Cole announced his retirement at the beginning of the campaign for the 1868 general election and did not seek another seat.14Freeman’s Journal, 6 July 1868; Daily News, 19 Nov. 1868; B.M. Walker, Ulster Politics: The Formative Years, 1868-86 (1989), 66. The proprietor of a small estate in county Monaghan, he had received under the terms of his father’s will a life interest of £10,000 charged on the Enniskillen estates.15PP 1876 [C. 1492] lxxx. 61 [275]; Belfast News-letter, 18 Mar. 1887. Having attended the inaugural meeting of the Central Protestant Defence Association in February 1868, he participated in subsequent local efforts to oppose the disestablishment of the Irish Church.16Belfast News-letter, 6 Feb. 1868, 31 Mar. 1869. He also continued to take an interest in local affairs, sitting on the committee for the drainage and navigation of Lough Erne from 1869.17Belfast News-letter, 13 Feb. 1869, 12 Feb. 1872. He died unmarried and childless at Florence Court in November 1882 and was buried in the family vault under the parish church of Enniskillen.18Belfast News-letter, 29 Nov., 4 Dec. 1882.