Cole, Sir (Galbraith) Lowry (1772–1842), army officer and colonial governor, was born in Dublin on 1 May 1772, second son in the family of five sons and five daughters of William Willoughby Cole (1736–1803), 1st earl of Enniskillen, and his wife, Anne, daughter of Galbraith Lowry Corry of Ahenis, Co. Tyrone, and sister of the 1st earl of Belmore. He was brought up at Florencecourt, Co. Fermanagh, the house begun by his great-grandfather, John Cole (1680–1726), and completed by his father. When aged only fourteen, after schooling at Armagh and Portarlington, Galbraith Lowry Cole entered the army as a cornet in the 12th light dragoons (27 March 1787). He completed his education at Stuttgart, where he studied the art of war (1790–92). His military career was marked by steady promotion (he was a lieutenant colonel by 1794), membership of different regiments, and service abroad. In 1797 he joined the general staff in Ireland as aide-de-camp to the 2nd Earl Carhampton (qv), and during the 1798 rebellion was wounded at Vinegar Hill (21 June).
Cole was an Orangeman, a member of the Dublin lodge (no. 176). Returned by his father as MP for Enniskillen (March 1797), he voted against the union of the Irish parliament with that of Great Britain (1799), and before it became effective he resigned (January 1800). Later he was MP for Co. Fermanagh (1803–23). In his maiden speech in the British house of commons (11 August 1803) he criticised the government for alleged ineffectiveness in suppressing the rebellion of Robert Emmet (qv); he twice voted against catholic relief (1816, 1819). Owing to his military career he was usually absent from both Westminster and Ireland. He took the command in Malta (1805) and then in Sicily (until 1809). It was in the Peninsular war that Cole made his reputation, the division he commanded achieving a great victory at Salamanca (July 1812). He was knighted (5 March 1813) and returned briefly to Ireland (1814). He missed Waterloo, as on 15 June 1815 he married, in London, Lady Frances Harris, second daughter of the 1st earl of Malmesbury, having known her family since his youth; they had three sons and four daughters. After Waterloo he commanded the British army of occupation in France and was based at Cambrai (1815–18).
Sir Lowry Cole (as he was known) refused the governorships of Corfu (1815) and Ceylon (1816), but began a new career in 1823 as governor of Mauritius, the Indian Ocean colony seized from France in 1810. He proved a reformer who abolished sinecures, set up an executive council, permitted the creation of a consultative committee representing leading colonists, and abolished the ‘colour bar’. If he pleased the French merchants and planters by obtaining a reduction in the duties on Mauritian sugar entering Great Britain, and this without any loss of Mauritius's freedom to trade with traditional Asian markets, he also displeased them by attempting to suppress illegal importation of slaves. In 1828 Cole was appointed governor of the Cape of Good Hope (seized from the Dutch in 1806), to which he went directly from Mauritius. After being sworn in (9 September) he faced opposition from Dutch slave-owners to measures intended to improve the slaves’ conditions, and, fearful that an elected assembly would act unfairly towards slaves and free natives, conceded representative government only at municipal level. His lasting achievement was the construction of a pass through the Hottentots Holland Mountains (latterly called Sir Lowry's Pass), which shortened the route between Cape Town and the farms to the east. On the eastern frontier of Cape Colony he settled Khoi-Khoi (Hottentots) in an attempt to create a buffer zone between colonists and their Xhosa neighbours. In 1830 Cole was promoted a full general. Towards the end of 1833 he returned to Europe.
Cole had a small estate, Marlbank, in Co. Fermanagh and a house in Granby Row, Dublin; his private income was £10,000 and as governor of Mauritius he made an additional £20,000 p.a. He died on 4 October 1842 at his seat, Highfield, near Hartford Bridge, Hampshire. His body was taken to the Cole family vault at Enniskillen and a hundred-foot column was erected to his memory. Tall, with commanding features, Sir Lowry is depicted in portraits at Florencecourt, at Government House, Cape Town, and at the South Africa Library, Cape Town; a bust in Roman style is at Réduit, Mauritius.