COLE, John (c.1620-91), of Enniskillen, co. Fermanagh, and Newland, co. Dublin.

Descended from a family which had lived in Devon and Cornwall since the Norman Conquest, the Coles first became established in Ireland in the aftermath of the Nine Years’ War. Sir William Cole, the founder of the family’s Irish fortunes, fought as a junior officer in the Kinsale campaign of 1601 and was recommended for his loyal service by Sir George Carew†.25CSP Ire. 1601-3, p. 218; 1603-6, p. 128. In 1607 he had been appointed overseer of the barges and boats at Ballyshannon in co. Roscommon, and shortly afterwards was made keeper of Enniskillen Castle – the government’s chief stronghold in co. Fermanagh.26DIB; CSP Ire. 1603-6, p. 280; 1608-10, p. 450. Under the patronage of the lord deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, Sir William became a servitor in Fermanagh, and provost of the newly incorporated borough of Enniskillen in 1612.27CSP Ire. 1608-10, p. 450; 1611-14, pp. 211, 294. Successive regimes were content to allow him to increase his land-holdings and local influence over the next thirty years, and by 1641 he had become the most important resident landowner in the county, with close connections with other leading planter families, such as the Parsons, Lowthers and Kings.28CSP Ire. 1615-25, pp. 223-4, 285, 468; 1625-32, pp. 35-6, 173, 254, 650-1; NAI, Lodge’s MSS 1.A.53.55, f. 235. During the early months of the Irish rebellion, Sir William Cole successfully defended Enniskillen and its hinterland, and formed a regiment of foot from the Protestant settlers of the region. Among the defenders of Enniskillen was his younger son, John Cole.29CB.

Barely 21 years of age in 1641, John Cole’s career during the early years of the Irish war was guided by the actions of his father, in whose regiment he may have served. Sir William defended Enniskillen for much of the 1640s. Rejecting the cessation of arms of 1643, he threw in his lot with the local parliamentarians, taking the Covenant in the early months of 1644, and joining forces with the lord president of Connaught, Sir Charles Coote*, in his campaigns in 1645-6 and afterwards.30Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 635-6; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 294, 337, 620; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 427, 433, 521, 502, 517, 532. Cole senior had no scruples about continuing to serve Parliament after the execution of the king, and went about raising more troops against the Irish in 1649-50.31T. Carte, Life of James Butler, Duke of Ormonde, iii. 427-8; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 243, 246, 439; 1650, p.73. The new regiment of foot raised through Sir William’s efforts in 1650 was assigned to John Cole as a full colonel, and the officer list included members of other Old Protestant families such as the Jacksons, Folliots, Cosbys and Swanwicks.32SP28/93, f. 102-3. On taking up his command in September 1650 John Cole became an important member of the Coote interest in the north west of Ireland, and his regiment was assigned to garrison Enniskillen.33SP28/70, f. 762; SP28/71, ff. 160, 170; SP28/72, f. 52; SP28/76, ff. 358, 362. In the summer of 1651 Cole was on active service in the field, joining (Sir) John Reynolds*, Colonel Richard Coote and Sir Charles Coote on their advance into Connaught.34Tanner Lttrs. 337. In the following spring he was part of the negotiating team appointed by Sir Charles Coote to arrange the controversial surrender of Galway, and he carried the news of a treaty to the parliamentary commissioners on 10 April.35Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 163, 163n, 166n. In June 1653 Cole’s regiment fell victim of the scheme to reduce the size of the army, in which all the Old Protestant regiments in Connaught and Ulster were summarily disbanded.36SP28/93, f. 102; SP63/281, unfol.

During his military service, Cole was rewarded with grants of land in co. Galway, but on his father’s death he received only a modicum of lands in and around Enniskillen, as the bulk of the estate passed to his nephew, Michael Cole.37McCoy, ‘Fermanagh’, 370. Nevertheless, during Michael’s minority, John Cole became head of the family interest in south west Ulster. In November 1653 he was appointed commissioner for the precinct of Belturbet (made up of cos. Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan), and in February 1654 he was made governor of Enniskillen.38Lodge, Peerage, iv. 209; NLI, MS 758, f. 38. His election for the first protectorate Parliament of 1654 as the sole MP for the combined counties of Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan, would seem to have been due to his own and his family’s influence in the three counties, underpinned by his continuing alliance with the Cootes, who remained the political ring-masters of the north west.39C219/44, unfol.; Mercurius Politicus no. 219 (17-24 Aug. 1654), p. 3710 (E.809.5). There is no evidence that Cole attended this Parliament, and during the later years of the protectorate he seems to have eschewed politics in favour of building his landed estate, purchasing 951 acres in co. Fermanagh, other land in co. Monaghan, and a house at Newland, co. Dublin.40Lodge, Peerage, iv. 209; Irish Census, 1659, 150, 371. He continued to be involved in local affairs, being named as an assessment commissioner from October 1654, and from 1655 serving as the nominal lieutenant-colonel to the ‘loose companies’ in the area that made up Col. John Clerke II’s regiment, but in July 1659 he was dismissed.41An Assessment for Ire.; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 182. In July 1659 Coles was sacked from his command, and this insult may have turned him against the commonwealth regime.42CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 12. In December, when the Irish regiments revolted against their commander-in-chief, Edmund Ludlowe II*, Cole subscribed the resolution promoted by Sir Charles Coote and other senior officers.43Ludlow, Mems. ii. 471; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 695-6; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 113n, 121-2. In the elections for the General Convention, which met in Dublin in March 1660, Cole was chosen to represent co. Fermanagh.44Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 182.

After the restoration of monarchy, John Cole benefited from the deals made by Sir Charles Coote and other leading Old Protestants who had switched their support to Charles II in the spring of 1660. In January 1661 he was granted a complete pardon for his activities in the interregnum (on the petition of Coote, recently created earl of Mountrath), and on 23 January the king passed a patent making him a baronet.45CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 188; CB. It was probably Mountrath who secured Cole’s appointment as governor of Dublin Castle in the same period, and it was certainly the new earl who ensured his land holdings were confirmed by royal order in the following March.46Bodl. Carte 158, pp. 6, 24; CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 243. Later in the same year Cole was appointed commissioner for the act of settlement in Ireland, and elected as MP for co. Fermanagh in the Irish Parliament.47CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 306; CJI i. 590. Cole was keen to establish strong connections with Old Protestant families across Ireland: before the Restoration he had married Elizabeth Chichester, whose parents were a son of the earl of Donegal and a daughter of Roger Jones, 1st Viscount Ranelagh; in 1661 he was appointed as one of the trustees for the infant Sir Richard Parsons of Birr (later 1st Viscount Rosse), whose uncle, Michael Cole, was John’s elder brother; and shortly afterwards he was acting as trustee for the estate of Viscount Massereene (Sir John Clotworthy*), who had married Lady Cole’s aunt.48CB; Birr Castle, Rosse MS A/13; PRONI, D.207/16/4. Cole’s financial position in the 1660s and early 1670s was evidently secure, as he was able to purchase new property in the city of Dublin, and to lend money on the Dublin statute staple.49NLI, D.9450; Irish Statute Staple Bks. 80. In the 1670s Cole also became more politically active, and by 1678 he had been appointed to the Irish privy council under the duke of Ormond.50HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 356-62. Although he signed the proclamation recognising James II as king in 1685, Cole lost his seat on the privy council shortly afterwards, and his son and heir, Sir Arthur Cole, was attainted by the new regime in Dublin.51HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 153-4. Sir John Cole died in 1691. Sir Arthur Cole was, by descent from his maternal grandmother, created Baron Ranelagh in 1715.52CB; CP.