220 



Lord Leicester. 



Vol. XII. 



Lord Leicester. 



The following extract from the Speech of Andrew 

 Stephenson, our late minister to England, delivered al 

 a meeting of the Agricultural Society of Albemarle, Va. 

 is taken from the number for last month of Skinner's 

 Farmer's Library. 



And here, Mr. President, I cannot forbear 

 alluding to one extraordinary and distin- 

 guished farmer of England, to whom not 

 only she, but the whole world, are indebted, 

 as one of the greatest patrons of Agriculture, 

 and benefactors of man. I allude to the late 

 Lord Leicester, better known as Mr. Coke, 

 of Holkham, the great farmer commoner of 

 England and the devoted friend of America 

 and all Americans. I can speak of him and 

 his farms, with some degree of accuracy, as 

 it was my good fortune to obtain his friend 

 ship and regard, during my residence in 

 England, and spend many weeks with him 

 in the country. This celebrated Holkham 

 estate, (or rather farms, for it is divided into 

 many,) contains many thousand acres. The 

 house, one of the most magnificent piles of 

 architecture in the kingdom, covers an en- 

 tire acre of ground; the immediate pleasure 

 grounds ten acres, and the park eight or 

 nine miles in circumference, and had just 

 been entirely enclosed with brick, when I 

 paid my first visit. The house was built by 

 the first Earl of Leicester and wife about 

 1734, and they dying without children, it de- 

 scended to Mr. Coke the nephew, as the 

 next of kin. He was then quite young. It 

 remained totally neglected until he took pos- 

 session of it on reaching his majority, with 

 no means however to cultivate, or improve 

 it. He was advised to pull down the house, 

 sell the bricks, and dispose of the lands at 

 any price or abandon them. It was about 

 this period that, speaking of the poverty of 

 Holkham, one of the females of the Walpole 

 family wittily said of it, " that there was al- 

 ways two rabbits contending for one blade 

 of grass." Its character and poverty how 

 ever admit of no doubt, for over the door of 

 the entrance hall is the following remarka- 

 ble inscription in marble. 



"This Seat, On An Open Barren Estate 

 Was Planned, Planted, Built, Decorated, 

 And Inhabited, The Middle Of The 18lh Century, 

 By Thomas Coke, Earl Of Leicester." 



On taking possession of the estate the first 

 effort was to sell. He offered it at 2s. 6d. an 

 acre, but being unable to get even that, he 

 determined to borrow the necessary funds, and 

 reclaim it. He did so, removed to it in his 

 twenty-second year and devoted himself to it 

 for life. Amid the prejudices, ignorance and 

 apathy of the people of Norfolk, he continued 

 firm and resolute, and kept to his opinions 



and persevered for years with all his charac- 

 teristic energy of purpose. Then it was that 

 things began to change. Men of talent and 

 enterprise began to take up the matter. The 

 people were awakened outof the sleep which 

 precedes dissolution, to consider and reflect 

 on the subject, and their duties; and in less 

 than a quarter of a century, his patriotism 

 and industry triumphed over ignorance and 

 apathy, and a poor barren estate that could 

 neither be sold nor cultivated, in its then 

 state, was made a perfect garden spot, yield- 

 ing an income of 40 shillings or more an 

 acre, and producing average crops in later 

 years of forty to fifty bushels of wheat and 

 more to an acre. It was during one of my 

 visits, that he told me that he had lived to 

 see all his expectations more than realized 

 and justified ; and that one of the most gra- 

 tifying things, connected with his agricultu- 

 ral life was, that only a {e\v months before, 

 he had embarked with his wife and four sons 

 on board of a vessel which was launched at 

 Wells, a small town near Holkham, which 

 had been built out of Oak produced from 

 acorns of his own planting ! He was then I 

 suppose more than eighty, and of course the 

 oak was some sixty years old! I will not 

 suffer myself to speak of the extent and vast- 

 ness of the estate, created as it were by one 

 man alone and unassisted. To give you, 

 however, from certain data, an idea of the 

 extent and character of the cropping, I will 

 read an extract from a Treatise on Practical 

 Farming and Grazing, by C. Hilliard, Esq., 

 a distinguished agriculturalist, published in 

 1837, and a copy of which he was good 

 enoug-h to present to me. In page 32 he 

 says; 



" At Holkham the wheat, being short in 

 the straw, is mowed with a cradle scythe: 

 youths, women and boys, immediately follow- 

 ing the mowers, binding it up (assisted by 

 horse-rakes) into sheaves, which, as the 

 straw is free from weeds, if the weather is 

 particularly fine, they will carry without 

 setting the sheaves up in the usual manner 

 in shocks. I was at Holkham, about eight 

 days, in the year 1831, at the time wheat 

 was harvesting, and a most animating sight 

 it was. I counted above one hundred, men, 

 women, and boys, employed in one large 

 field. In this way, three hundred and forty- 

 five acres of wheat were cut, carted and 

 stacked, in six days. This was getting on 

 with wheat harvest more expeditiously, per- 

 haps, than is in the power of any other per- 

 son in the kingdom. I saw at the same time, 

 four hundred and fifty acres of turnips, of 

 different sorts, and mangel wurzel, in which 

 Mr. Coke challenged me to find a single 

 weed, excepting some that might have just 



