COKE, Thomas William I (1754-1842), of Holkham, Norf.

When the agricultural improver ‘Coke of Norfolk’ secured his tenth return for the county in 1820, he was 65, had a gross annual income of £47,200 and owned over 50,000 acres. Being denied the earldom of Leicester he coveted, he had declined offers of peerages in 1776, 1778, 1783, 1794 and 1806. He remained the ‘first commoner of England’, known for his hospitality, the annual Holkham sheep shearings and his outspoken championship of Charles James Fox†. As a committed member of the Whig ‘Mountain’, he had caused a stir in 1815 by advocating limited protection for agriculture under the corn laws. He had helped to install George Tierney* as opposition Commons leader in 1818, and vehemently opposed the Liverpool ministry’s enactment of repressive legislation (which he termed ‘bills of blood’) after Peterloo. HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 477-80; D. Rapp, ‘Left-Wing Whigs: Whitbread, the Mountain and Reform, 1809-1815’, JBS, xxi (1982), 35-66; Wade Martins, 45. He protested at the partisan appointment of Tories to the Norfolk bench in 1819 and rallied for reform and retrenchment with his friends and political allies, the 4th earl of Albemarle and the duke of Sussex, at the Norwich Foxite dinner, 24 Jan. 1820. The Times, 1, 26 Nov., 8, 10 Dec. 1819; Norf. Chron. 29 Jan. 1820; Lord Albemarle, Fifty Years of My Life, i. 105. His hopes of sponsoring a second Whig for Norfolk at the general election in March were dashed, and on the hustings he spoke of the post-war depression affecting agriculture and industry and demanded a ‘full and free representation in Parliament as the best safeguard of the rights of the people’. Hants RO, Calthorpe mss 26M62/F/C219; Norf. RO, Gurney mss RQG 572/2; Norf. Chron. 26 Feb., 4, 18 Mar.; Bury and Norwich Post, 15 Mar. 1820.

Coke remained central to Whig activity in Norfolk between 1820 and 1832 and was a regular speaker at county and Foxite meetings in Suffolk, corporation dinners in Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn and the Thetford wool fair. See NORFOLK, SUFFOLK, GREAT YARMOUTH, KING’S LYNN and THETFORD. In the 1820 Parliament he divided with the Whig moderates on major issues, fairly steadily for economy and retrenchment and as hitherto for parliamentary reform, 9 May 1821, 25 Apr. 1822, 20 Feb., 24 Apr. 1823, and Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. A radical publication of that year noted that he ‘attended frequently and voted with opposition’. Session of Parl. 1825, p. 457. Yet his attendance, which had never been more than sporadic, was increasingly confined to a few weeks before the spring assizes and a similar period to include high profile reform dinners in Westminster, and his utterances, as a self-appointed spokesman for the agricultural interest and the Foxites, became increasingly egotistical and repetitive. He presented Norfolk petitions complaining of agricultural distress, 9, 15 May 1820, but dissented from their ‘misconceived’ call for restrictions on grain imports and said he would oppose ‘any further alteration of the existing [corn] law’. The Times, 10, 16 May 1820. He explained that although he accepted the agriculturists’ argument that land would fall out of cultivation without ‘a fair remunerative price’, he differed from them by holding taxation responsible for the distress suffered by ‘farmers and other classes’, 25 May. Ibid. 26 May 1820. He wrote similarly to the agriculturists of King’s Lynn, 12 June 1820, 27 Jan. 1821, and refused to endorse any distress petitions failing to propose tax reductions and parliamentary reform as remedies. Stirling, 452-8. Opposing the appointment of the 1820 select committee on agricultural distress (to which he was named, 31 May), he stated that he would prefer ‘inquiry on a large scale, comprehending commercial and manufacturing interests’, preparatory to a showdown debate on the state of the nation, 30 May. He presented William Cobbett’s† petition complaining of the depreciation of the currency, 5 June. The Times, 31 May, 6 June 1820. He strenuously supported the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary campaigns on behalf of Queen Caroline, and at the Norfolk county meeting, 19 Aug., he criticized the ‘corrupt’ and ‘servile Tories’ and their ‘green bag schemes’ and cited the 1st earl of Chatham’s description of the Lords as ‘the hospital for incurables’; he spoke similarly on presenting their petition, 18 Sept. Ibid. 21 Aug., 19 Sept.; Bury and Norwich Post, 23 Aug. 1820. After failing to rally the county in December 1820, he used his speech at the Norfolk Foxite dinner, 19 Feb. 1821, to advocate the queen’s cause, criticize loyal addresses to the king and call for parliamentary reform. Grey mss, Birch to Grey, 27 Dec. 1820; The Times, 22 Jan. 1821.

On 12 Feb. 1821 Coke returned to Holkham to find almost all his grandchildren there ill with scarlet fever, of which Georgiana Anson died. Stirling, 433. He vouched for the distress alluded to in the Norfolk petitions for repeal of the malt duty which he presented, 5, 6 Mar., and now maintained that little could be expected from the agriculture committee and questioned the motives of its Tory chairman Thomas Gooch in seeking further inquiry and tax reductions, which, without retrenchment, he dismissed as ‘worthless’. The Times, 6, 7 Mar. 1821. He presented and endorsed a petition for Catholic relief from the Norwich diocese, 16 Mar. Ibid. 17 Mar. 1821. Supporting the opposition’s additional malt duty proposal, 16 Mar., 3 Apr., he alluded to the success of his own measure in 1816 and criticized the leader of the House Lord Castlereagh’s ‘single handed’ rule and despotic use of placemen. Ibid. 17 Mar., 4 Apr. 1821. At the reform dinner at the London Tavern, 4 Apr., he described himself as a ‘rebel since the American war’ and maintained that Norfolk was ‘not at present represented’, as he and his Tory colleague Edmond Wodehouse ‘were as much at variance as it was possible for any two men to be’. Ibid. 5 Apr. 1821; HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 50. He expressed pride at being ‘chosen to present’ the radical Suffolk distress petition, 17 Apr., brought one up from a victim of Peterloo, 15 May, and others against the poor bill, 6, 10 June. The Times, 18 Apr., 16 May, 7, 11 June 1821. Advocating abolition of the agricultural horse tax, 14 June, he noted Gooch’s acquiescence in the measure and praised Hume for his ‘important and unremitting’ opposition that session. What proved to be the last Holkham sheep shearing in July 1821 was attended by the industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen of New Lanark, the American ambassador Richard Rush and other foreign dignitaries. Coke, adding a political dimension to the occasion, said that the agriculture select committee ‘could do no good’ and explained his exclusion from it by Gooch, who had replaced him with Wodehouse. R.M. Bacon, Report of Holkham Sheep-Shearing (1821); The Times, 10, 14 July 1821; Stirling, 434-52; R. Owen, Life of Robert Owen (1857), i. 218-23.

He announced at the Norfolk ‘Fox and Reform’ dinner that he had ‘no new line of politics to declare’, 24 Jan. 1822. The Times, 26 Jan.; County Chron. 29 Jan. 1822. His finances and with them his reputation as a successful agricultural pioneer were ‘in crisis’, and the gross income from his 42,000-acre Norfolk estate had fallen from £31,949 in 1820 to £28,743. Parker, Coke of Norfolk, 146, 197; T. Lowndes, Letter to Messrs. Coke, Curwen, etc. 5, 9, 10. He had supported the yeomen’s requisition for a county meeting on distress, of which he wrote to the quarter sessions chairman Edward Harbord*, 3rd Baron Suffield, 3 Jan. 1822:

The desperate state to which agriculture is reduced can alone be brought right by county meetings, and forcing ministers to a reduction of taxation. They will do nothing of their own accord. R.M. Bacon, Mem. Baron Suffield, 150-1.

At the meeting, 12 Jan., he called for ‘a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull together’ and urged the county to adopt a petition recommending reform and a £5,000,000 reduction in taxation as palliative measures. On presenting it, he was called to order for denouncing the ‘hard hearted and callous government’ who disregarded the people’s complaints, and the corrupt and profligate House, 7 Feb. The Times, 14 Jan. 8 Feb.; County Herald, 19 Jan. 1822; Stirling, 460-1. Congratulating him, the Liverpool Whig William Roscoe† wrote:

You have not hesitated to speak out in the House in such a manner as seems to have surprised, no less than provoked them. I much doubt whether anyone else would have ventured on such a step, and if he had, he would not, perhaps, have brought himself off without giving up a single inch! Stirling, 462.

Coke rightly questioned the merits of a government ‘concession’ permitting distillers to malt wheat as hitherto, 11 Feb., but he apparently failed to divide against them on taxation that day, and again, 15, 21 Feb., although he presented petitions on both occasions. The Times, 12, 16, 22 Feb. 1822. He ‘regretted’ the dismissal of Sir Robert Wilson* from the army for his conduct at the queen’s funeral, 13 Feb., Ibid. 14 Feb. 1822. and also harried Londonderry (as Castlereagh had become) over that of the vice-consul at Florence, 22 Feb. Ibid. 23 Feb. 1822. His sudden and late remarriage on 26 Feb. to his 18-year-old goddaughter Anne Keppel (Albemarle’s daughter), who was generally considered to be excellent company but no beauty, caused a sensation and was variously attributed to his failure to secure a match between her and his nephew and heir, Thomas Coke II*, his lack of ready money and her pique at her father’s remarriage to Coke’s niece Charlotte Hunloke. Add. 52445, ff. 52, 63; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 145; Creevey Pprs. ii. 38; Stirling, 462-7. When he next vented his spleen against the deployment of placemen by Londonderry, 7 Mar., the minister quipped that ‘after what had recently passed ... he had hoped to have found him in a better temper’. He presented and endorsed Norfolk distress petitions that day, and ‘dozens’ from the hundreds between 29 Apr. and 24 May, when he castigated the country gentlemen for failing to ‘pay sufficient respect or attention to these numberless petitions from the agriculturists’. The 1822 agriculture committee’s report and Londonderry’s resolutions permitting the release from bond of foreign corn for milling failed to please Coke, who challenged him to visit Norfolk ‘to satisfy himself of the extent of the distress’, 3 May; he spoke similarly on bringing up the county’s second petition for remedial action, 3 June. The Times, 26, 30 Apr., 1-4, 17, 21, 25 May 1822. He presented and was a minority teller for receiving the strongly worded North Greenhoe distress petition, rejected by 89-55 that day, but deliberately refrained from endorsing it. However, he supported others which he brought up, 4, 12, 14, 19 June. Ibid. 4, 5, 13, 15, 20 June 1822. He voted to condemn the growing influence of the crown, 24 June, to examine the dealings of the lord advocate with the Scottish press, 25 June, and for repeal of the salt duties, 28 June. Commenting privately on Londonderry’s suicide in August 1822, he wrote: ‘One may fairly say that England has lost a pestiferous minister, the Holy Alliance a good friend, and the liberties of mankind a systematic oppressor’. Stirling, 468.

There was speculation that Coke, whose heir was born at Holkham, 26 Dec. 1822, used his wife’s dowry to settle £22,000 on his daughter Elizabeth, who on 5 Dec. married Spencer Stanhope of Canon Hall, Yorkshire. Parker, Coke of Norfolk, 189; Stirling, 472-9. His steward Francis Blaikie had become ‘quite appalled with the present and future prospect of Mr. Coke’s affairs’, and, taking remedial action, Coke sold his Buckinghamshire estate of Hillesden to John Farquhar in 1823 for £127,000 to repay his debts, so increasing his disposable annual income from £1,080 to £2,350. By 1827 the worst of the ‘crisis’ was over. Parker, Coke of Norfolk, 191-5. ‘Noodled’ at the Norfolk county meeting, 3 Jan. 1823, by the adoption of Cobbett’s radical petition (which demanded the appropriation of church property to pay off the national debt), he delayed its presentation until 24 Apr., to allow time to counter it with moderate petitions from the hundreds, and joined in its wholesale condemnation. Norf. Chron. 4, 11 Jan.; The Times, 6, 8, 9 Jan., 25 Apr. 1823; Stirling 481-5. He presented and endorsed petitions for Catholic relief, 17 Apr., lower malt duties, 18 Apr., the abolition of colonial slavery, 22 May, and action to combat distress, 26 May, and chaired the Westminster anniversary dinner, 23 May 1823. The Times, 18, 19 Apr., 23, 27 May 1823; Add. 56548, f. 2. Returning late for the 1824 session, he voted for inquiry into the state of Ireland, 11 May, ‘said a few words which did not reach the gallery’ on the equalization of duties on Scotch and Irish spirits, 18 May, and presented petitions for the repeal of coastwise coal duties, 18 May, in favour of the beer bill, 21 May, and for tax concessions, 10 June. He paired in condemnation of the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 11 June 1824. That summer, when the Tory duke of Buckingham purchased a Norfolk estate, his toady Robert Ward* congratulated him on

a victory over a very offensive, overbearing, and, in my opinion, very empty man, admirable! I could not have hoped that Mr. C[oke] would have been so mortified. It is almost worse than missing the title of Leicester. Buckingham, Mems. Geo. IV. ii. 141.

Coke voted to hear the Catholic Association at the bar of the House, 18 Feb., and against the bill outlawing it, 21 Feb. 1825. He presented and endorsed the Norwich diocese’s petition for Catholic relief, 19 Apr., but dissented from several petitions from the Norfolk hundreds against altering the corn laws which he presented, 28 Apr., 4 May. The Times, 29 Apr., 5 May 1825. He condemned the award to the duke of Cumberland for Prince George’s education as ‘preposterous’ and ‘displeasing to the public at large’ and a sign of a corrupt House, 6 June, and opposed the annuity bill, 6, 10 June. During the December 1825 banking crisis, he acted swiftly to restore local confidence in his Norfolk bank, Gurney’s, following the collapse of Day and Company. Stirling, 492-3; Norwich Mercury, 24, 31 Dec. 1825. He is not reported to have attended Parliament again before the general election of 1826, when, in the absence of a suitable Whig (he had held discussions with Sir Jacob Astley† and William Earle Lytton Bulwer* ), he endorsed the candidature for Norfolk of his colleague Wodehouse, who had forfeited Tory support on account of his pro-Catholic votes, and they were returned unopposed. Stirling, 498; Norwich Mercury, 6 May; The Times, 25 May; Norf. Chron. 10, 24 June, 1 July 1826. At Great Yarmouth at Michaelmas 1826, he condemned ‘No Popery’ and the vexatious opposition there to his grandson George Anson* at the general election. Norf. Chron. 30 Sept., 7 Oct.; The Times, 5 Oct. 1826.

Lord John Russell* found Coke ‘in high feather’ at Holkham in December 1826, but cautioned Henry Brougham* against summoning him to Westminster for the debate on the address. Brougham mss, Russell to Brougham, 15 Dec. [1826]. He presented and endorsed pro-Catholic petitions from the archdeacons and clergy of the Norfolk and Sudbury deaneries, 5 Mar., and voted for relief, 6 Mar. 1827. He expressed sympathy for the corn growers, but could not fully endorse the Norfolk landowners’ petition against altering the corn laws, 8 Mar. The Times, 6, 9 Mar. 1827. He received three weeks’ leave to attend the assizes, 23 Mar., and a week on account of ill health, 7 May. He presented Dissenters’ petitions for repeal of the Test Acts, 15 May, 6, 7 June. Ibid. 16 May, 7, 8 June 1827. Declaring himself ‘no friend of the Canning ministry’, whose appointment he had discussed in correspondence with their supporter Brougham, he accompanied Sir Francis Burdett* to the Westminster anniversary dinner, 23 May. Stirling, 510-11; M.W. Patterson, Sir Francis Burdett and his Times, ii. 562. His representations on behalf of the Norfolk farmers, who objected to ministers’ ruling that wetting barley in the preparation of animal foodstuffs contravened the excise laws, went unheeded, 19 June, and he failed to carry an amendment to the malt bill sanctioning the practice, 22 June 1827. The Times, 20, 23 June 1827. Chairing the dinner at the Thetford wool fair in July he admitted his differences with constituents who advocated protection and, moderating his views, declared:

The ministers of the day were not exactly the men he could have wished; but if they acted as he hoped they would, very differently from the system of many years past, he would give them his support. At present he had not given a vote to government. Bury and Norwich Post, 18 July; The Times, 26 July 1827.

Coke’s reported parliamentary activity during the duke of Wellington’s ministry was minimal. He voted for repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb., and Catholic relief, 12 May 1828. When Catholic emancipation was conceded in 1829 he divided for the measure, 6 Mar., presented and endorsed a favourable petition from the Norfolk clergy, 12 Mar., and criticized those hostile to it, 12 Mar. He presented a petition for Jewish emancipation from Diss, 14 May, joined Wodehouse in opposing the abortive Smithfield market bill, 15 May, and proposed the toast to the Member John Cam Hobhouse at the Westminster anniversary dinner, 23 May. Add. 56550, f. 79. He was ‘shut out’ from the division on Lord Blandford’s reform proposals, 2 June. The marquess of Anglesey, whom Coke credited in his Michaelmas speech at King’s Lynn with securing Catholic emancipation, informed Lord Holland, 19 Nov. 1829:

I have been at Holkham for near a fortnight, very well amused and delighted to find Coke so well and so perfectly happy. That menage is a pattern and Lady Anne plays her part so admirably that it is not possible to remark the disparity of years ... You appear to inherit the sort of veneration he is known to have felt for your uncle. Stirling, 515; Add. 51568.

Coke pleaded in vain for unanimity at the stormy county meeting convened to petition for measures to alleviate distress, 14 Jan. 1830. Norwich Mercury, 23 Jan. 1830; Bacon, 291. He delayed returning to Parliament afterwards and received a month’s leave on account of illness in his family, 4 Mar. He presented petitions from the Norfolk Agricultural Society and others opposed to the sale of beer bill, 4 May, and from Diss against tithes, 10 May, and divided steadily with the revived Whig opposition, 11 May-11 June, when he congratulated them for securing the retrenchment conceded by government. He had paired for abolition of the death penalty for forgery offences, 7 June 1830. Talk of his retirement at the dissolution in August evaporated and his endorsement of the pro-reform Whig Sir Michael Browne Ffolkes proved decisive in securing Wodehouse’s retirement and their unopposed return. Add. 51593, Coke to Holland, 22, 25, 30 July; Norf. RO, Hamond of Westacre mss HMN/5/121/3; Norf. RO, Gunton mss 1/31; Norwich Mercury, 24, 31 July, 14 Aug.; The Times, 17 Aug.; Grey mss, Ellice to Grey [Aug. 1830]. He also offered to exert his influence in Norwich on behalf of Sir Ronald Craufurd Ferguson*. Hopetoun mss 167, f. 153. At the corporation dinner at King’s Lynn, 14 Oct. 1830, he ‘professed himself a decided opponent’ of the ministry, but said that he anticipated voting with them if, as he expected, they introduced ‘Whig’ measures for retrenchment, lower taxes and reform. He added: ‘The king can make a peer, he can put a ribband upon the breast of a slave, but the king cannot make what you can, what the people can make - an independent Member’. He condemned slavery and ‘the worst man that ever sat on the throne, George III, that bloody king’. The Times, 18 Oct. 1830. Later he maintained that he had said ‘reign’ not ‘king’ and that he had been misreported, but what the duke of Sussex termed his ‘lapsus linguae’ proved damaging. Wellington mss WP1/1159/73; Grey mss, Coke to Grey, 4 Sept. 1831; Stirling, 528-33. The duke of Bedford commented: ‘He must have been drunk, or he is in his dotage. I do not think William IV will be much pleased by his attack on George III’. Add. 51670, Bedford to Lady Holland, 20 Oct. 1830.

The ministry listed Coke among their ‘foes’, but he was ‘shut out’ from the division on the civil list which brought them down, 15 Nov. 1830. Earlier that evening he had presented several anti-slavery petitions. He later returned to Holkham, where he remained during the ‘Swing’ riots and helped to detain the miscreants, who had hoped for his assistance. Stirling, 537-9; L.J. Mitchell, ‘Foxite Politics and the Great Reform Bill’, EHR, cviii (1993), 349-50. He endorsed the Berkshire petition for repeal of the malt duty (which the Norfolk yeomanry also urged) as a measure ‘more beneficial to the labouring poor, as well as to the agriculturist, than, perhaps any other’, 2 Mar. 1831. Heartened by the Grey ministry’s reform bill, he declared, 7 Mar.:

I have been a firm, zealous, and I am a very old reformer ... I confess that, of late years, I have had but few expectations of seeing reform made a government measure, or, I should rather say, of seeing any administration bring forward any measure of reform upon so bold and liberal a scale ... When I heard that ... [Lord Grey] had made a resolution to do away with the rotten boroughs, I felt more confidence in him than ever, and I was convinced of the absolute necessity of exerting myself to the utmost in giving support to the present administration.

Returning early from ten days’ leave to attend the assizes (granted, 14 Mar.), he voted for the reform bill at its second reading, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. He came in again with Browne Ffolkes at the ensuing general election. Norwich Mercury, 30 Apr., 7 May; The Times, 9 May 1831; Holland House Diaries, 44, 226; Heron, Notes, 199.

Coke voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, but he confined his support for its details to a few paired votes (26, 28 July, 3, 5, 9 Aug.) and only paired for its passage, 21 Sept. 1831. He had expected to be made a peer (Earl Castleacre) at the coronation that month and announced his intended retirement, 31 July, but, largely on account of his lapsus linguae, William IV had his name removed from Grey’s list. Stirling, 555-8; Grey mss, Grey to Coke 30 Aug., 1, 3 Sept., replies, 1, 3, 4 Sept. 1831. Following the Lords’ rejection of the reform bill, he voted for Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct., and urged the adoption of an address supporting ministers and the bill at the Norfolk county meeting, 19 Nov., when he had to counter radical criticism of his conduct as a lighthouse proprietor. The Times, 21 Nov., Norwich Mercury, 26 Nov. 1831, Bacon, 365. He divided for the revised reform bill at its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831. His letter to Grey ‘strongly urging’ the creation of peers to ensure its passage was considered by the cabinet, 2 Jan. 1832, and approved by Holland. Holland House Diaries, 107; Add. 51593, Coke to Holland, 8 Jan. 1832. He paired for the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and voted for the bill’s third reading, 22 Mar. He was absent when the address requesting the king to appoint only ministers who would carry the reform bill unimpaired was adopted, 10 May. He divided with them on the Russian-Dutch loan, 20 July, having paired, 12, 16 July. He also endorsed their decision to postpone the corn bill and quibbled needlessly with Alexander Baring over its details, 1 June. 1832.

Coke stood down at the dissolution of 1832 and nominated Liberals in the new Norfolk East and Norfolk West constituencies at the general election. The Times, 20, 27 Dec. 1832. The county marked his retirement ‘after nearly 60 years’ service’ with a public dinner at St. Andrews Hall, Norwich, 12 Apr. 1833, and hailed him as ‘the father of Norfolk agriculture ... and uncompromising defender of general liberty’. J. Dawson, Narrative of Procs. ... at Dinner to Coke, 12 Apr. 1833. Out of Parliament, he remained a controversial figure, accused by Hume of profiteering as the lessee of the Dungeness lighthouse, by Tory agriculturists of promoting a scheme too dependent on a plentiful supply of cheap labour and by The Times of eccentricity in advocating reform of the Lords. Wellington mss WP1/1202/5; Parker, Coke of Norfolk, 178-81, 186; The Times, 7 Oct. 1835. His elevation there as earl of Leicester of Holkham by Queen Victoria, on the recommendation of Lord Melbourne as premier, 12 Aug. 1837, pleased every Liberal. Holland House Diaries, 370; Stirling, 572. Shortly afterwards and in failing health he moved to Longford Hall, Derbyshire, the seat of his late brother Edward (d. 1837), where he died in June 1842. He was buried near Holkham and commemorated there with a monument erected by public subscription. The Times, 22 May, 8, 21 Aug. 1838, 2, 6 July, 23 Aug., 10 Nov. 1842, 27 Jan., 5 Sept. 1843. He had spent £500,000 on improving his estates, which, by his will, dated 2 Feb. 1838, he entrusted to the Liberal whip Edward Ellice*, John Motteaux, the 4th earl of Rosebery, the 3rd earl Spencer and his widow, who died in childbirth, 22 July 1844, having married Ellice the previous year. Parker, Coke of Norfolk, 197-8; PROB 11/1969/688; IR26/1618/849; The Times, 8 Nov. 1842. His eldest son Thomas William Coke (1822-1909) succeeded him in the earldom and estates. Two younger sons represented West Norfolk as Liberals: Edward Keppel Wentworth Coke (1824-89), 1847-52, and Wenman Clarence Walpole Coke (1828-1907), 1858-65. Recalling him, Robert Owen observed: ‘Coke was no ordinary man. He was a decided honest republican in principle, and no respecter of persons merely on account of their rank’. Owen, i, 220-1. As he would have wished, friends and obituarists credited him with transforming English agriculture. Earl Spencer, ‘On the improvements which have taken place in West Norf.’ Jnl. R. Agric. Soc. of Eng. iii (1842), 1-9; Gent. Mag. (1842), ii. 317. Twentieth century historians confirmed Coke’s contribution as a pioneer of agricultural change, but denied him the key role which he had attributed to himself for political gain. Parker, Coke of Norfolk, 81; Oxford DNB.