Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 1 (2010), p. 136

Susanna Wade Martins’ biography of Sir Thomas Coke does what any good biography should do. It provides a detailed description of his life, his family background, his education and the influences that shaped his politics and his world view. It then locates him within broader local, regional and national contexts, emphasizing both the nuances of Coke’s experiences and the wider significance of his behaviour. Coke’s life provides a window through which we can observe profound changes in farming and agriculture, rural social relations, landownership, the country house as well as shifts in the fortunes of the Whigs, debates over issues such as the reform of parliament, Catholic emancipation and slavery. Biographies have fallen out of favour with publishers recently and the ‘heroes’ of the agricultural revolution have dropped beyond the gaze of agricultural historians. A volume on this well-known Whig landowner has been long overdue. That the author has such an in-depth knowledge of Holkham, rural Norfolk and changes in agriculture in this county adds to the seductive potential of the book.

This potential is partly realized through the dual focus both on Coke’s role as an agricultural innovator and his far less understood activities as a Whig Member of Parliament. Wade Martins guides us through his experiences, from his early life before inheriting the Holkham estate, through to his parliamentary career of 50 years as an MP, his input to new techniques of farming, and his hospitality as a country house owner. Never a natural parliamentarian and one who spoke rarely in the Commons, Coke sat on the periphery of many key debates in the politics of this period. The way that Norfolk formed a centre of gravity for his politics is, though, the real power of Wade Martins’ insights. His involvement in the Norfolk Petition of 1778 is illuminating, for instance, of local Whig politics. Coke’s enduring friendships with Charles Fox and William Windham are particularly noteworthy aspects of the book.

One of the key inputs this book makes is in fleshing out Coke’s life beyond the aspects we already know about and describing the links between local elite society and the wealthy and powerful of London. Here we are introduced to a number of original insights to his life and personality, including his artistic and literary circle of friends, which included William Roscoe and Samuel Parr. Thus the complexities of his identity are given full coverage. He is not, we are told, ‘to be dismissed as a bucolic and self-opinionated wealthy squire’ (p.163). Particularly strong contributions are made where Wade Martins illustrates the relationship between Coke’s Whiggism and other aspects of his life, the way that his politics left an indelible impression on his world view, his social circle and even his contribution to agricultural innovations as a ‘gentleman farmer’, ‘patriot’ and landowner. Wade Martins’ treatment of life at Holkham, described through the correspondence of visitors, is another fascinating element of the book. Particularly original approaches here include the sociability connected with Coke’s famous sheep-shearing events, which both publicized agricultural innovations at Holkham and served as important lubricators of local elite society.

Some concerns, however, are raised by a reading of this book. As Wade Martins points out, Coke left few personal sources in the way of correspondence or other private material. This poses significant challenges for a biographer attempting to provide a close personal analysis, difficulties that this author attempts to overcome but which become particularly acute at certain points. In chapter six, for instance, we are told that Coke had claimed to have supported Catholic emancipation for 25 years before the 1829 legislation (p.146). However, we cannot know his real thoughts and the exact nature of his position without these types of sources. The book misses the voice and thoughts of Coke himself: he becomes a muted echo merely reverberating through the testimonies and memories of others. We are left unenlightened as to his private thoughts or the issues that he felt were activating him, along with his everyday experiences of the changing world around him. The bulk of the qualitative analysis focuses on public debates, newspaper reports and the comments of Coke’s friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Thus we have a picture of Coke’s public image and few clues as to how this image related to his private self. For a man already known to have been an extrovert self-publicist, such perspectives are of limited utility. Overall though, readers of the Review will find much of interest in this volume, and a fresh perspective on a range of historical subjects.