LEICESTER, OF HOLM/AM, THOMAS WILLIAM COKE, EARL OF. Thomas Coke, Esq., of Holkham, in Norfolk, great great-grandson of Sir Edward Coke, the chief-justice, was in 1723 created Baron Level, of Minster Level, in Oxfordshire; and in 1744 Viscount Coke of Holkham, and Earl of Leicester. On his death without heirs male, in 1759, the titles became extinct, nod the est ties went to his nephew, Wenulan Roberts, Esq. (the son of his sister Anne and her husband, Colonel Philip Roberts), who thereupon assumed the surname and arms of Coke. The subject of the present I notice was his son, who was born on the 4th of May 1752. Oa the death of his father in 1776, Mr. Coke succeeded him iu the repre sentation of the county of Norfolk —his only inducement as he asserted in a speech which he made at a dinner given to him in 1833, being that be was told if he would not stand, a Tory would be sure to come in. This horror of Toryism, or of what he imagined that term to mean, constituted nearly the whole of Mr. Coke's political system to the end of his life. With a brief interval Mr. Coke con tinued to represent the county of Norfolk down to his retirement from the House of Commons iu 1832.
Mr. Coke, though a keen and steady partisan, was not a frequent speaker in parliament. The two occasions ou which he appeared most conspicuously wore, ou the 24th of March 17S3, when in a short speech he moved an address requesting that his majesty would be pleased to form an administration entitled to the confidence of the people, which, being assented to, was followed by the resignation of Lord Shelburne and the formation of the Coalition Ministry of Mr. Fox and Lord North ; and on the 2nd and 3rd of February 1734, when be carried two motions against the existing ministry of Mr. Pitt, which however had no effect. He also on subsequent years came forward on some occasions when measures affecting agrioulture occupied the attention of the llouse. In all matters of general policy be voted with Mr. Fox, and after his death with Lord Grey and what was commonly called the Whig party.
His influence in the country arose from his large estates and the lead he took in agricultural improvement, together with his popular qualities as a landlord and a country gentleman. He is said to have raised the rental of his estate of Holkham, in tho period of .between
sixty and seventy years during which it was in his possession, from little more than 2000/. to above 20,000/. From the death of Francis, duke of Bedford, in 1802, he was regarded as the chief of English agriculturists. His plantations were so extensive that the average value of the annual fall of timber on his property is stated to have amounted at his death to 2700/., or considerably more than the entire rental of the land when it came into his hands. The annual sheep shearing at Holkham, at which some hundreds of guests were entertained for several days, was probably the greatest agricultural festival in the world.
According to Mr. Coke's own account in the after-dinner speech of 1833 already quoted, he was twice offered a peerage in the first session that he sat in parliament. More than sixty years after, namely, on the 21st of July 1837, he was at last raised to the Upper House as Earl of Leicester, of Holkham. It is understood that the difficulty which had prevented his being sooner made a peer was that he would accept of nothing except this earldom of Leicester, which had been held by his maternal great-uncle, whose estates he inherited, but which had in the meantime been bestowed, in 1784, upon Lord Ferrers, afterwards Marquis Townshend, to whose heirs it of course descends. It was thought a very strong measure, when, to gratify the old man, the same title, with the slight and not very intelligible variation, Leicester of Holkham,' was bestowed upon a second person. It made of course no difference that the other Earl of Leicester had subsequently acquired a higher title; he was still notwithstanding as much Earl of Leicester as Marquis Townaheud. The proceeding was precisely of the same nature as if Mr. Coke had been made Duke of Wellington, of Holkham.
The Earl of Leicester died at Longford Hall, Derbyshire, on the 30th of June 1842, at the venerable age of ninety. He was twice married : first, in 1775, to Jane, daughter of James Lennox Dutton, Esq., who died in 1800, and by whom he had three daughters; secondly, on the 26th of February 1822, to the Lady Anne Amelia Keppel, third daughter of the Earl of Albemarle, who brought him five sons and a daughter. The eldest eon, born on Christmas-day, 1322, succeeded him as Earl of Leicester of Holkham.