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Updated: June 10, 2025
The last eighteen months before I went to Cambridge, I was placed, or rather placed myself, under the tuition of Mr. Robert Collyer, rector of Warham, a living close to Holkham in the gift of my brother Leicester. Between my Ely tutor and myself there was but little sympathy. He was a man of much refinement, but with not much indulgence for such aberrant proclivities as mine.
Lord Holland was a great friend of my father's; but, if Creevey is to be trusted which, as a rule, my recollection of him would permit me to doubt, though perhaps not in this instance Lord Holland did not go to Holkham because of my father's dislike to Lady Holland. I shall not return to Lady Holland, so I will say a parting word of her forthwith.
Even with the colossal wealth produced by modern industry we should be staggered at a residence costing millions of dollars. Yet the Duke of Devonshire rivaled at Chatsworth, and Lord Leicester at Holkham, Marlborough's building at Blenheim, and many other costly palaces were erected during the following half century.
It would be some time before a gypsy would hand over his brother to the harum-beck, even supposing you would not only make him a king, but a justice of the peace, and not only give him the world, but the best farm on the Holkham estate; but gypsies are wild foxes, and there is certainly a wonderful difference between the way of thinking of the wild fox who retains his brush, and that of the scurvy kennel creature who has lost his tail.
It was begun by Lord Leicester in 1734, and finished by his Countess in 1764. Blomefield, the well-known Norfolk historian, speaks of it as a noble, stately, and sumptuous palace. Lord Coke and Lord Burlington were men of similar tastes and pursuits, and were diligent students of classical and Italian art. The Holkham Library still contains treasures rich and rare.
For this reason, if a short holiday was given less than a week say Norfolk was too far off; and I was not permitted to spend it at Holkham. I generally went to Charles Fox's at Addison Road, or to Holland House.
When he was professionally called away to any distance from home as, for instance, when travelling from Bath to Holkham, in Norfolk, to direct the irrigation and drainage of Mr. Coke's land in that county he rode on horseback, making frequent detours from the road to note the geological features of the country which he traversed.
His seat of Holkham was one of those great new palaces which the age reared at such elaborate cost. It was full of beautiful things the art of Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Van Dyke, rare manuscripts, books, and tapestries. So magnificent was Coke that a legend long ran that his horses were shod with gold and that the wheels of his chariots were of solid silver.
When the King's degenerate son, who became George IV, after some special misconduct, wrote to propose his annual visit to Holkham, Coke replied, "Holkham is open to strangers on Tuesdays." It was an independent and irate England which spoke in Coke. Those who paid taxes, he said, should control those who governed. America was not getting fair play.
The honorary and corresponding members elected within the same period, were the Dean of Middleham, T.W. Coke esquire, member of parliament, of Holkham in Norfolk, and the reverend William Leigh, who has been before mentioned, of Little Plumstead in the same county. The latter had published several valuable letters in the public papers under the signature of Africanus.
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