COSBY, FRANCIS (d. 1580), Irish general, settled in Ireland in Henry VIII's reign. In 1548 Bellingham, the lord deputy, acknowledged the resource and courage displayed by Cosby in attacking the marauders who infested the boundaries of the English pale, and ten years later Sussex was as enthusiastic in his commendation. In 1558 Cosby was appointed general of the Kerne, and in 1562 was granted the suppressed abbey of Stradbally in Queen's County. In 1565 he became governor of Maryborough, and seneschal of Queen's County. He helped to massacre, although the amount of his responsibility is doubtful, many of the O'Mores at Mullagh, near Athy, in 1567, who had been summoned to the fortress on avowedly peaceful business. (The date 1577 in the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’ is corrected to 1567 in the ‘Annals of Lough Cé.’) Cosby was not successful in repressing disorder in Queen's County. Rory Oge O'More was continually threatening him, and took his eldest son prisoner in 1577. The murder of Rory in the following year relieved Cosby of his chief difficulty, but the outbreak of the Desmond rebellion in 1580 caused him new anxieties, and he was killed by the rebels at the battle of Glenmalure, 25 Aug. 1580. He married Elizabeth Palmer, by whom he had three sons, Alexander, Henry, and Arnold, and one daughter. Alexander succeeded to the estates, received additional grants in Queen's County, and was, with his son Francis, killed at the battle of Stradbally Bridge. The estates subsequently passed to Richard, another son of Alexander, whose descendants still possess them. Arnold, Francis Cosby's second son, served under the Earl of Leicester in the Low Countries.
[Burke's Landed Gentry; Four Masters, ed. O'Donovan (1856); Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors; Webb's Irish Biography; Carew MSS.; Cal. Irish State Papers; Froude's Hist. x. 580.]
COSBY, Sir HENRY AUGUSTUS MONTAGU (1743–1822), lieutenant-general, only son of Captain Alexander Cosby, a direct descendant of Francis Cosby of Stradbally [q. v.], was born at Minorca, where his father was then stationed, in 1743. Captain Cosby was himself a distinguished officer, who after serving in the Duke of Montagu's regiment, and on the staff in Germany and Minorca, went on half-pay, and was sent to India by the directors of the East India Company in 1753 with a special mission to reorganise the company's troops. He first served as second in command to Major Stringer Lawrence in the Madras presidency, and was then transferred to Bombay, where he acted as second in command at the taking of Surat in 1759, of which important city he was appointed commandant, and where he died soon afterwards. Henry Cosby first saw service as a volunteer in the capture of Gheria, the stronghold of the Maráthá pirate Angria, by Colonel Clive and Admiral Watson in 1756, when he was only thirteen years of age. In 1760 he joined the company's Madras regiment of Europeans, which his father had disciplined, as an ensign. He was at once employed in Coote's advance on Pondicherry, and at the capture of that place he distinguished himself by saving the life of the major commanding H.M.'s 79th regiment, who offered him an ensigncy in his regiment, which he refused. He was present at the siege of Vellore, and on being promoted lieutenant was sent with a detachment of Europeans and sepoys to Masulipatam, where he remained in command until 1764. He threw up his command in order to serve at the siege of Madura in that year, and in 1767 he was promoted captain and appointed to the 6th battalion of Madras sepoys, which he commanded at the battles of the Chengama and of Errore, and at the siege of Arlier, where he was wounded in 1768. In 1771 he commanded the troops which stormed Vellore on 27 Sept., and was appointed governor of that place; in 1772 he went on the staff as brigade-major, and in 1773 he was promoted lieutenant-colonel, and appointed the first adjutant-general of the company's troops in Madras. In that capacity he served at the second siege of Tanjore in 1775, and was sent home with the despatches announcing its capture by Brigadier-general Joseph Smith, the commander-in-chief at Madras. He returned to India in 1777, and, after commanding a force against the celebrated palegar Bom Rauze, resigned his staff appointment in December 1778 to take up the lucrative appointment of commander of the nawáb of Arcot's cavalry. This force he thoroughly disciplined, and he played an important part at its head in the second war with Haidar Ali. His forced march from Trichinopoly was a great military feat, though he was just too late to join Colonel Baillie, who was defeated and forced to surrender at Pullalúr, and he managed to circumvent Haidar Ali, and cleverly joined Sir
