Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cole, Ralph
COLE, Sir RALPH (1625?–1704), amateur artist, was son and heir of Sir Nicholas Cole, first baronet, of Brancepeth Castle, Durham. The founders of this family were Nicholas and Thomas Cole, sons of James Cole, smith, of Gateshead. Thomas Cole amassed a large fortune in bills, bonds, &c., and died in 1620; Nicholas was father of Ralph Cole, sheriff of Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1625, and mayor in 1633, who in 1636 bought Brancepeth Castle. This stately edifice had been forfeited by the attainder of Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, to whom it had been granted by James I, the crown having sequestrated the estates of the Earl of Westmorland for participation in the rising of the north in the reign of Elizabeth. Ralph Cole was father of Nicholas Cole of Kepyer, near Durham, who was created a baronet in 1640; he was sheriff of Newcastle in 1633, and mayor in 1644, in which year he defended the town against the Scots. For his loyalty to the royal cause he was degraded, imprisoned, and in 1646 fined 4,000l. He married Mary, second daughter of Sir Thomas Liddell, bart., of Ravensworth, and left three sons, the eldest of whom was Sir Ralph Cole, the subject of this notice. Sir Ralph Cole thus inherited the vast fortune of his ancestors, and spent the greater part of it on art and the patronage of artists. He took lessons in painting from Vandyck, and has left a memorial of his powers in a portrait of Thomas Wyndham, preserved at Petworth, and engraved in mezzotint by R. Tompson. He also exercised himself in the more mechanical branches of the art, and scraped in mezzotint a portrait of Charles II. His own portrait was painted by Lely, and used to hang in Brancepeth Castle; it was engraved in mezzotint by his friend and brother dilettante, Francis Place. He is said to have retained several Italian painters in his service. He represented Durham city in parliament from 1675–6 to 1678, and in 1685 commanded the Durham regiment of militia. In 1674 he sold Kepyer, and in 1701 he sold Brancepeth to Sir Henry Bellasyse. He died 9 Aug. 1704, and was buried at Brancepeth. He was twice married: first to Margaret, daughter of Thomas Wyndham, a niece of Sir William Wyndham, first baronet, of Orchard Wyndham, Somersetshire, and secondly to Catherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Foulis, of Ingleby Manor, Yorkshire,who died 29 Sept. 1704, and was buried at Brancepeth. He left three sons by his first wife, but was succeeded by his grandson, Sir Nicholas Cole, third baronet. The fortunes of the family having been impaired in the way described above, the family sank into a position of actual want, and the last baronet, Sir Mark Cole, grandson of Sir Ralph, was buried at the expense of his cousin, Sir Ralph Milbanke. There is a portrait of Sir Ralph Cole facing p. 387 of Walpole's 'Anecdotes of Painters' (4th ed. 1798).
[Redgrave's Dict. of English Artists; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painters; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England; J. Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotint Portraits; catalogue of the pictures in Petworth House; Burke's Extinct Baronetage; Burke's Vicissitudes of Families; Brand's Hist. of Newcastle; Surtees's Hist. of Durham, vol. ii.; Chelsum's Hist, of Mezzotint Engraving; De Laborde's Histoire de la Gravure en manière noire; Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, new ser. iv. 182; information from John Hamerton Crump, esq.]