Cole was the son of
William Cole, 1st Earl of Enniskillen. He succeeded his father to the peerage and the
Florence Court estate in 1803. In 1790 and in 1798, he was elected for
Sligo and
County Fermanagh. Both times, he chose to sit for the latter and represented the constituency in the
Irish House of Commons until the
Act of Union in 1801. After the Union, Cole was subsequently returned to the
British House of Commons for
Fermanagh, a seat he held until he succeeded his father to the earldom in 1803. He then sat in the
House of Lords as an
Irish representative peer from 1804 to 1840. He was also Governor of Fermanagh until 1831 and thereafter
Lord Lieutenant of the county until his death. He was made a
Knight of the Order of St Patrick in 1810 and in 1815 created
Baron Grinstead, of Grinstead in the County of Wiltshire, in the
Peerage of the United Kingdom. ==Personal life==