ENNISKILLEN, WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY COLE, 3RD EARL OF British palaeontologist, was born on Jan. 25, 1807, and educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Ox ford. Lord Cole, as he then was, amassed with his friend Sir Philip de M. G. Egerton a fine collection of fossil fishes now in the British Museum. He died on Nov. 21, 1886, being succeeded by his son (b. 1845) as 4th earl.
The first of the Coles (an old Devonshire and Cornwall family) to settle in Ireland was Sir William Cole (d. 1653), who was "undertaker" of the northern plantation and received a grant of a large property in Fermanagh in 1611, and became provost and later governor of Enniskillen. In 1760 his descendant John Cole (d. 1767) was created Baron Mountflorence, and the latter's son, William Willoughby Cole (1736-1803), was in 1776 created Viscount Enniskillen and in 1789 earl. The 1st earl's second son, Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole (1772-1842), was a prominent general in the Peninsular War, and colonel of the 27th Inniskillings, the Irish regiment with whose name the family was associated.