ZTbc Cofces of Ibolfebam 209 



When the latter lease expired Mr. Coke offered to 

 renew it at five shillings per acre, tithe-free. This 

 offer Mr. Butt declined ; and as no other tenant was 

 forthcoming, Mr. Coke resolved to take the farm into 

 his own hands. 



Mr. Walter Rye, notable alike as athlete and antiquary, 

 who knows his Norfolk probably better than any man 

 living, in an admirable brochure on " Coke of Norfolk," 

 suggests another reason for Mr. Coke's determination to 

 take the management of his farms into his own hands. 

 He had engaged as " auditor-general " of his estates one 

 Major Richard Gardiner, a rather remarkable adventurer 

 who had been in turn privateersman, parson, successful 

 preacher, and soldier. In the last-named capacity he had 

 distinguished himself at the capture of Martinique, in 

 the West Indies Expedition of 1759, and had written a 

 narrative of that expedition which rapidly ran through 

 three editions, and was translated into French. In 1773 

 Gardiner retired from the army on half-pay with the rank 

 of major, and for some time earned a more or less pre- 

 carious livelihood by writing prologues and epilogues to 

 plays, political pamphlets, and satires in verse. He had a 

 knack of turning off election squibs, and when he offered 

 his services to Coke of Holkham, with whose father he 

 had been on friendly terms, as " auditor-general " of his 

 estates at a salary of 600 a year, it was an understood 

 thing that his pen should be at the service of his patron 

 in his electioneering campaigns. Major Gardiner appears, 

 in fact, to have been a sort of literary Chevalier Strong, 

 and he regarded Mr. Coke in the same light in which 

 that jolly major-domo regarded Sir Francis Clavering. 



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