out of the War of 1641, he was, according to Carte, worth £4,000 per annum. He raised a considerable body of troops to act against the Irish, and soon distinguished himself. His first action in the war was the relief of the Castle of Wicklow, a service he executed with success. He was hastily recalled by the Lords-Justices to place Dublin in a proper state of defence. On his way, he was attacked by, but routed Luke O'Toole at the head of 1,000 native troops. Carte says Dublin "was but sorrily fortified, for the suburbs, which were large, had no walls about them; and the city wall, having been built about four hundred years, was now very much decayed, and had no flankers on it, nor places whereon the garrison might stand to fight. Sir Charles … was a man of courage and experience, but very rough and sour in his temper, and these qualities of his nature being heightened by a recent sense of the very great damages he had sustained from the rebels in his forges [iron smelting works] and estate, put him upon acts of revenge, violence, and cruelty, which he exercised on all occasions with too little distinction between the innocent and the guilty." He raised the sieges of Swords and other strong places near Dublin, and repelled repeated incursions of the Irish upon the suburbs. His severity and intemperate language at the council board tended to send over many of the Catholic lords of the Pale to the Confederate Irish. Carte speaks of "his inhuman executions and promiscuous murders of the people in Wicklow;" and his condemnation of Father Higgins, brought to Dublin on safe-conduct by the Marquis of Ormond, is specially animadverted on by the same author. On l0th April 1642 he showed great bravery in the relief of Birr, and other strongholds in the vicinity, and after being forty-eight hours on horseback, returned to his camp without the loss of a man. "This," says Cox in his History, "was the prodigious passage through Montrath woods, which, indeed, is wonderful in many respects, and therefore justly gave occasion for the title of Earl of Montrath to be entailed upon the posterity of Sir Charles Coot, who was the chief commander of this expedition." Soon after his return to Dublin, he again marched out to the relief of Geashill. Being warned concerning the difficulty of retreating from some difficult passes he entered, he rejoined: "I protest I never thought of that in my life. I always considered how to do my business, and when that was done I got home again as well as I could, and hitherto I have not missed by forcing my way." He next occupied Philipstown, and then Trim. His death, early in May 1642, in the defence of that town, is thus related by Cox: "The Irish, to the number of 3,000, came in the dead of the night to surprise him; but the sentinel gave the alarm, and thereupon Sir Charles Coot, with all the horse he could get, being not above seventeen, issued out of the gate, and was followed by others as fast as they could get ready. The success was answerable to so generous an undertaking, and the Irish were routed, without any other considerable loss on the English side except that of Sir Charles Coot himself, who was shot dead; but whether by the enemy or one of his own troopers is variously reported. Upon his death, the government of Dublin was given to the Lord Lambert." 52 170 271
Coote, Sir Charles, Earl of Mountrath, son of preceding, was born early in the 17th century. On 18th April 1644, we find him one of the Protestant deputation to Charles I. at Oxford, "asking," says Carte, "future graces of his Majesty … that he would abate his quit rents for a time, to encourage and enable Protestants to replant the kingdom, and cause a good walled town to be built in every county of the kingdom for their security, no Papist being permitted to dwell therein;… that the penal laws should
continue in force, and be put in execution;… that a competent Protestant army should be established in the kingdom," and other measures of a like tendency. Next year he was made President of Connaught, and zealously defended it for the Parliament, and held Derry bravely against the Ulster Scots, until the defeat of Ormond at Rathmines enabled it to be effectually relieved. On 23rd June 1650 he encountered and defeated, near Derry, the army of Bishop Heber MacMahon, a prelate whom we are told he afterwards caused "to be hanged with all the circumstances of contumely, reproach, and cruelty, which he could devise." In November 1651 he joined Ireton, and occupied Clare. He next blockaded Galway, which surrendered in 1652; and in the same year repossessed himself of Ballyshannon, Donegal, Sligo, and Ballymote. In December 1652 he was appointed the first of the Commonwealth's Commissioners for the afiairs of Ireland in Connaught. In 1659 he was made one of the Commissfoners of Government, and about the same period entered into measures with Lord Broghill for the restoration of the King. In February, according to Clarendon, he sent a messenger over to the Mar-
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