Sir Charles Coote
& the Irish Confederate War
May 11, 2009 Joseph Allen McCullough
The Irish Confederate War (1641-1653)
In 1641, the Irish in Ulster rose up against the English adventurers who had occupied their land during the Ulster plantation. Initially an organized protest, it quickly spiralled out of control into a chaotic and bloody rebellion. The oppressed Irish farmers, along with Irish wood kerns (bandits who lived in the woods) seized the opportunity to strike out against their English landlords. Thousands of English were murdered in the shock of the initial rising. Thousands more were driven, naked, from their homes to seek safety and refuge wherever they could find it.
The 1641 Uprising soon spread across the entire country and developed into a more general conflict known as the Confederate War. On the one side was the Confederation of Irish Catholics who represented the Irish and the Old English landowners. The other side consisted of the New English, adventurers and administrators who had only just come over to seek their fortune.
Sir Charles Coote (died in 1661)
One of those English adventurers was Sir Charles Coote. With the outbreak of the Confederate War, he raised his own army in the west of Ireland to fight with the Earl of Ormond against the Confederation. However, soon after the outbreak of the English Civil War, Charles Coote fled to England and joined the forces of the Parliamentarians. In 1645, Parliament named him Lord President of Connacht and returned him to Ireland. Over the next seven years, Charles Coote fought in numerous battles against the Irish Confederates, the English Royalists, and the Scottish Protestants in Ireland.
The Act of Settlement and the Restoration of Charles II
When the Confederate War finally ended, Coote was one of the few Irish landowners given an exemption from the Act of Settlement that stripped many Irish landowners of their land, and removed them to Connacht. Because of this exemption, Charles Coote became one of the more powerful men in Ireland. Apart from land, he also owned a massive iron-foundry that employed 2,500 men. However, he was never fully trusted by the forces of Parliament, and perhaps for good reason. In 1660, Charles Coote supported the reinstatement of Charles II as King of England and Ireland. For that reason, Charles II named him Earl of Mountrath. Sir Charles Coote died the next year.
Sources:
The Oxford Companion to Irish History, Ed. S. J. Connolly, Oxford University Press, 1998
A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes, Jonathan Bardon, Gill & Macmillan, 2008
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