Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lambart, Charles
LAMBART, CHARLES, first Earl of Cavan (1600–1660), the eldest son of Oliver Lambart, first baron Lambart in the Irish peerage [q. v.], and Hester, daughter of Sir William Fleetwood of Carrington Manor, Bedfordshire, was born in 1600. He is said to have been educated at Cambridge. On the death of his father on 23 May 1618 he became second Baron Lambart, and was given in wardship to his mother on 26 April 1619. On 8 Aug. 1622 he had a grant of 1,296 acres of land in Westmeath and King's County as part of a scheme for the plantation of Leinster. Lambart represented Bossiney, Cornwall, in the English parliaments of 1625 and 1627, and on 4 Nov. 1634 made his first appearance in the Irish House of Lords, where he frequently spoke. On 6 March 1627 he was appointed seneschal for the government of the county of Cavan and the town of Kells. Henceforth he lived in Ireland, and on 17 May 1628 he succeeded to the command of Lord Moore's company of foot. On the outbreak of the rebellion in 1641 Lambart's estates suffered very severely; in November of that year he raised a regiment of a thousand foot. On 12 Nov. 1641 he was one of those appointed to confer with the rebels in Ulster. Lambart now became a notable commander; he was with Ormonde in February 1643 at the rout of Kilsaghlan, and when in 1642 Sir Charles Coote the elder [q. v.] left Dublin, Lambart became military governor, and was continued in this position by order of council of 12 May 1642, on the receipt of the news of Coote's death. He was also made a privy councillor. But he had difficulties with a discontented military party under Sir John Temple, and with the civil authorities, who disliked his contempt for the common law and somewhat hasty procedure. In May 1643 he marched with a thousand horse into Wicklow on a foraging expedition. He helped to arrange the cessation from hostilities of 1643, its renewal in 1644, and the examination of the Earl of Glamorgan in December 1645. On 1 April 1647 he was made Earl of Cavan and Viscount Kilcoursie.
After the reduction of Ireland by the parliament Cavan was in poor circumstances, but he had a lease granted to him of Clontarf and Arlaine, and a pension of 30s. a week for himself and 1l. for his wife. He died on 25 June 1660, and was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. He married Jane (d. 1655), daughter of Richard, lord Robartes, and by her had a numerous family, of whom Richard, the second earl, was a lunatic, and Oliver, the third son, surviving the second son, succeeded to the family estates under the will of his father.
[Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, i. 353; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, art. ‘Cavan;’ Gilbert's Hist. of the Irish Confederation, passim; Carte's Ormonde, i. 263, &c.]