COKE OF NORFOLK: FATTIER OF EXPERIMENTAL FARMS
"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before Kings; he shall not stand before mean men."
At the beginning of this article we have quoted a text taken from the Proverbs of Solomon, which we believe can be applied more truthfully to the subject of our paper than to any other name conspicuous in the annuals of agriculture. For he was a man diligent in his business and he stood before Kings.
Thomas William Coke, of Holkham (Holy Home), Earl of Leicester, was the eldest son of Robert Wenman. He was born in the year 1752, and educated at Eton, after which he travelled abroad. On the death of his father, Coke was elected in his place as member of Parliament for the County of Norfolk. He was then in his twenty-second year. He entered the youngest member; his political career extended over a period of fifty-seven years, and he finished up as "Father of the House of Commons." His domestic life was singularly happy—very different from the sad state of his great contemporary Arthur Young. In 1775 he married his cousin, Jane Dutton, by whom he had three daughters. After her death in 1800 he remained a widower for twenty-one years and then at the age of sixty-eight wedded a girl of eighteen, Lady Anne Keppel, by whom he had five sons and one daughter. Coke had the unique experience of being offered a Peerage seven times under six different Prime Ministers, and he was the first commoner raised to the Peerage by Queen Victoria on her accession to the Throne. In this connection an amusing story is told. In the year 1817 Coke was called on to present, at a Levee, a very forcible address to the Prince of Wales, who was then acting as Regent, praying him "to dismiss from his presence and Council those advisers, who, by their conduct, had proved themselves alike enemies to the Throne and the people." The Regent was warned of the proposal. Knowing that Coke valued his position as a Commoner above everything else, he declared with an oath that: "If Coke of Norfolk enters my presence, by God, I'll knight him." This speech was repeated to Coke. "If he dares," was the rejoinder, "by God I'll break his sword."
Part of the estate or Holkham was formerly a series of salt marshes on the coast of the North Sea. And when Coke came into his property in 1776—a fateful year in the history of the British Empire the surrounding district was little better than a rabbit-warren, with long stretches of shingle and sand. Soon after Coke's marriage, when his wife remarked that she was going down to Norfolk, the witty old Lady Townshend said, "Then, my dear, all you will see will be one blade of grass and two rabbits fighting for that." The story of how Coke came to be a practical farmer is told in the third volume of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, published in the year 1842. The article containing it was written by Earl Spencer, and is of special interest as he had it direct from the lips of Mr. Coke (then Lord Leicester) a short time before his death. When Coke entered into his heritage, he found that five leases were about to expire. These farms were held at a rental of 3s. 6d. an acre; and in the previous leases they had been valued at 1s. 6d. an acre. At that time the agriculture of Norfolk was of the poorest character; and we may judge of the quality of the Holkham land by comparing it with the average rent of 10s. an acre which Arthur Young says prevailed at this time. Coke sent for the two tenants, Mr. Brett and Mr. Tann, and offered to renew their leases at a slightly higher figure, namely 5s. an acre. Both refused; and Mr. Brett jeered at the suggestion, saying that the land was not worth even the 1s. 6d. an acre which had originally been paid for it. This curt refusal was enough for a man of Coke's temperament. He forthwith decided to farm the land himself. It was thus that a young man of twenty-two, possessor of a princely fortune, fresh from the salons of Europe, suddenly turned his back on a gay and fashionable world; and stung into action by the laughter of a lazy tenant, took up the management of a sterile farm, raised a parish from poverty to affluence, transformed a desolate county into a cornfield, and left a name renowned in the annals of English agriculture.
In the history of agriculture, the name of Coke is chiefly remembered by those famous gatherings locally known as "Coke's Clippings." These wonderful meetings began in a simple way with the clipping or shearing of sheep, but soon came to embrace the whole realm of the rural industry. As might be imagined, when Coke took over the management of his farms, he had not the slightest knowledge of the science and practice of agriculture. So he called together his neighbours and frankly asked their advice.
They in turn were doubtless glad to meet a young man so keen and so eager to learn. Soon they brought their friends and their relatives, and two years later these little country gatherings had assumed a more definite character, and were thereupon called "Coke's Clippings." Soon agriculturists from all parts of Great Britain wrote to ask if they might attend. Swiftly and steadily the fame of the "clippings" grew, till presently scientific and other celebrated men from the United States and the Continent travelled to England to take part in these meetings. Year by year they increased in numbers till at last they embraced every nationality, every profession, and every rank in life, from Royalty to the poorest peasant. Holkham had, in fact, become a great experimental farm—a private estate turned by the enterprise of its owner into a public institution. Nowadays, we are familiar with State experimental farms, which are visited by thousands of farmers once or twice a year. But a century ago such a thing was unheard of, and Coke may justly be termed the "Father of the Experimental Farm." At these shearings Coke presented many cups and prizes for the invention of any new agricultural implement, for suggestions with regard to improved systems of cropping, of irrigation, of enriching the soil, and for articles on agricultural subjects—in a word, to every one who contributed to advance any branch whatsoever of the agricultural industry. Moreover, we are told that at a meeting of 1803 sweepstakes were offered for guessing the correct weight of a wether. The winner was a certain Mr. Money Hill, who guessed the exact weight—130 lbs.; while a butcher named Rett was a good second, and he guessed the weights of four other sheep within one pound. It is said that, one year, there died on the Holkham estate a tenant who had won no less than £800 in prizes at the "clippings." Party politics were carefully excluded from these meetings, and any attempt to introduce a party spirit into the speeches at the annual dinners was at once silenced by Coke. As a politician he was a prominent Whig, but as an agriculturist he sank his politics and opened his doors to men of merit irrespective of their views. Thus he gave Sir John Sinclair a magnificent goblet as a token of his appreciation of Sinclair's "Code of Agriculture," in spite of the fact that Sir John was a strong supporter of the "vile Tories and their viler head, Mr. Pitt." Sir John was pleased beyond measure and remarked, with a true Highland courtesy, that hitherto the most priceless heirloom in his castle had been the drinking cup of Mary Queen of Scots, but henceforth he would look on the goblet of his Whig friend as his greatest treasure.
The last of "Coke's Clippings" took place in the year 1821. It was attended by seven thousand people, and lasted three whole days. There is something very pleasing in the account of this pastoral scene. A stately mansion in a splendid park, with a group of village maidens spinning flax, on a velvet lawn, in the midst of a vast concourse of people drawn from all parts of the earth. Punctually at ten o'clock in the morning, so we read, Miss Coke came on to the lawn, accompanied by her father, and the Duke of Sussex. Then after greetings taken and greetings given, the vast crowd proceeded, some riding, some driving, some walking, to inspect the different farms on the estate. The first day was given up to the study of the inoculated pasture, prize cattle, new implements, sheep-shearing amid farm crops. The second day was devoted to fresh fields, farm schools and cottage gardens. The third day was absorbed in the inspection of the carcases of animals that had been slaughtered, speech-making, and the distribution of prizes. On that day at 3 p.m., seven hundred guests sat down to dinner, a mid-day meal, which, with the speeches and prizes lasted for seven hours! The historian of this period has left us an account of the most popular toasts at these annual banquets, such as "A Fine Fleece and a Fat Carcase," "The Plough and a Good Use of It," while the tribute to Coke's efforts to enclose all waste lands always brought down the house, for it wittily ran: "The Enclosing of all Waists," and Coke's own toast "Live and Let Live," was invariably greeted with tumultuous applause. The two annalists who have left us unimpeachable accounts of those memorable meetings are both agreed that Coke himself was the central figure. Dr. Rigby, in "Holkham and its Agriculture" (1818) writes: "He is everywhere and with everyone. He solicits enquiry from everyone." At each halt in the ride little knots of people collected round him and listened with absorbed interest to all he said, while for hours he thus sustained the character of leader, lecturer, and host. And the American Ambassador of that day, His Excellency Mr. Richard Rush, writes in "A Residence at the Court of London," "No matter what the subsequent advance of English agriculture or its results, Mr. Coke will ever take honourable rank among the pioneers of the great work. Come what will in the future, the Holkham sheep-shearings' will live in English rural annals. Long will tradition speak of them as uniting improvements in agriculture to an abundant, cordial, and joyous hospitality."