Background
After the death of his father, Charles Coote also led some of the King"s forces under Ormonde against the Confederate army, but was captured defending a stronghold in the Curragh of Kildare by an Irish army led by Castlehaven.
After the death of his father, Charles Coote also led some of the King"s forces under Ormonde against the Confederate army, but was captured defending a stronghold in the Curragh of Kildare by an Irish army led by Castlehaven.
The younger Coote became an Member of Parliament for Leitrim in the Irish Parliament between 1634 and 1635 and again in 1640, a year before the outbreak of the Irish rebellion of 1641. He was released during the 1643 cessation of arms. In Dublin Archbishop Ussher condemned the extremism of Coote and his fellows, but Coote was unbending.
The King, however, ignored these demands and so Coote joined the Parliamentarians.
Coote was appointed commander of Connaught by the Parliamentarians in 1645. Operating from west Ulster, he temporarily overran the north-west of the province over the next two years.
After the New Model Army under Cromwell captured Drogheda, a force of several thousand Parliamentarians under Robert Venables headed north into Ulster, where Coote joined Venables to destroy the Scottish Ulster Royalists at the Battle of Lisnagarvey. By early 1650, however, the Irish Ulster army (now under Heber MacMahon, as O"Neill had died a few months earlier) became active once more, and Coote was again forced onto the defensive.
After being reinforced, he advanced on the Irish army at Scarrifholis and routed them, killing over 2,000 soldiers and taking no prisoners.
Having largely cleared Ulster, in June 1651 he advanced on Athlone from the North-West, evading a blocking force. Through this movement the town was gained. The town contained a stone bridge over the Shannon and this action thus opened up Connaught to the Parliamentarian army for the first time.
He besieged Galway in the winter of 1651 and it surrendered in April 1652.
Coote inherited the substantial plantation lands of his father in the midlands of Ireland. In December 1659 Coote took part in a coup against the government, seizing Dublin Castle.
In February 1660 he sent a representative to Charles II, inviting him to make an attempt on Ireland. Coote was a central figure in the Convention Parliament.
Following the Charles II ennobled him Earl of Mountrath in 1660 as a reward for his support.
Coote died of smallpox the following year and was buried in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin. He built Rush Hall near Mountrath, which was the family"s main residence for several generations.
The elder Charles Coote was active in the suppression of the Irish insurgents in 1642, launching attacks on Clontarf and County Wicklow in late 1641 in which many civilians died. He was killed in action defending Trim in May 1642. He defended Derry against a protracted siege (March–August 1649) with the unlikely assistance of the Ulster army under Owen Roe O"Neill.
After this, Coote"s army attempted to take the formidable fortress of Charlemont, which was defended by the remnants of the Ulster army, but his soldiers suffered heavy casualties before the stronghold surrendered.