Sir William Cole (c.1571–1653) was an English soldier and politician, who participated in the Plantation of Ulster and established a settler town at Enniskillen, County Fermanagh.
[1] In 1633, Cole was briefly imprisoned in Dublin Castle for orchestrating protests in Fermanagh and Monaghan against the payment of contributions to the army.
In 1640 he was part of an Irish parliamentary delegation sent to London to complain against the King's Lord Deputy in Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford.
Upon the outbreak of the rebellion that month, Cole led the successful defence of Enniskillen Castle against attacks by Maguire.
[5] Cole was one of four Ulster settlers commissioned by Charles I of England in October 1641 to raise regiments to defend the north-west of Ireland: taken into pay by the English parliament in July 1642, these forces formed the nucleus of the Laggan Army.
[2] Cole was among the Ulster soldiers who resisted agreeing to the Solemn League and Covenant in January 1644, instead adhering to the Royalist authority of the Marquess of Ormond.
In December 1649 he was commissioned by parliament to command 800 men to fight in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but due to delays in recruiting he never went.