Charles Cecil Cotes

Cotes was born in 1846, eldest surviving son of John Cotes of Woodcote Hall near Newport, Shropshire (himself a former MP) and his wife Lady Louisa Jenkinson, daughter of Charles Jenkinson, 3rd Earl of Liverpool, and thus nephew of the former Prime Minister, the 2nd Earl.

[4] Cotes first sought election to Parliament for the then two-member borough seat of Shrewsbury at a by-election following the death of William Clement in 1870 and polled 1,253 votes but was defeated by a majority of 38 by his Conservative opponent, Douglas Straight.

[5] When the Liberals came to power in 1880 under William Ewart Gladstone, he was appointed a Junior Lord of the Treasury, which he remained until the government fell in 1885.

[6] Following his father's death in 1874, Cotes succeeded to his estates in Shropshire and Staffordshire in England and Montgomeryshire in Wales, which in 1876 amounted to 6,470 acres with an income of £8.860 a year.

[8] Cotes was a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace for the counties of Shropshire and Staffordshire and at the time of his death was a trustee of the Harper Adams Agricultural College which was then being erected near Newport.