James Cotter the Younger facts for kids
James Cotter the Younger (Irish: Séamus Óg Mac Coitir; 4 August 1689 – 7 May 1720), or James Cotter of Anngrove, was the son of Sir James Fitz Edmond Cotter who had commanded King James's Irish Army forces in the Counties of Cork, Limerick, and Kerry. His mother was Eleanor/Ellen Plunkett, daughter of Matthew, 7th Lord Louth, and he was a member of the Irish Cotter family, which had Norse-Gaelic origins.
He was a key figure in the 1713 Dublin election riot.
He was born 4 August 1689 and was executed in Cork City on 7 May 1720. His death was seen by many, especially within the Catholic population of Ireland, as a form of political assassination.
Life
At the time of his death he was seen, like his father before him, as the natural leader of the Catholics of Cork. He was also a prominent patron of poetry and other literature in the Irish language (Gaelic). The Irish text Párliament na mBan or 'The Parliament of Women' was dedicated by its author, Domhnall Ó Colmáin,' to a young James Cotter in 1697. As one of the few major landowners of the Catholic faith remaining in Ireland, and as a man of known Jacobite and Tory sympathies he was distrusted by the authorities. He was also held in suspicion by those of his landed neighbours who were part of the Protestant Ascendancy and of Whiggish political views. Amongst his overt political actions he is believed to have played a leading part in the instigation of the election riots of 1713 in Dublin. His trial was a cause célèbre at the time and widely seen as an example of judicial murder.
James Cotter was executed in Cork City on 7 May 1720. News of his execution triggered widespread riots on a national scale. He was buried in his family's vault at Carrigtwohill.
Some have also seen the death of James Cotter as the working of a family feud. James' father had been intimately involved in the assassination of the regicide John Lisle in Switzerland (1664). The wife of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at the time of James Cotter's trial was a granddaughter of John Lisle.
Up to twenty poems in Irish (Gaelic) survive which reflect the widespread dismay felt at James Cotter's execution, including ones by Éadbhard de Nógla, son of his close friend, the lawyer Patrick Nagle.
A Cork broadsheet of 1720 recorded this tribute to James Cotter:
"Just, Prudent, Pious, everything that’s Great Lodg’d in his breast, and formed the Man complete, His Body may consume, his Virtues shall Recorded be, till the World’s Funeral."
Family
James married Margaret Mathew of Thurles, their elder son was Sir James Cotter, 1st Baronet Cotter of Rockforest, MP for Askeaton, their other children were: Edmond, Ellen and Elizabeth. The authorities intervened in the education of James' children, who were raised as Protestants. This act eliminated another of the families who formed the hereditary leadership of the Catholic community in Ireland.
See also
