Coke, Thomas William

(1754 - 1842) of Holkham, Norf., 1st s. of Wenman Roberts, afterwards Coke, of Longford, Derby; educ. Eton; m. 1 1775 Jane Dutton of Loughcrew, Meath (d. 1800), 2 1822 Ldy. Anne Amelia Keppel, dau. of 4th E. of Albemarle; MP 1776 - 84, 1790 - 1832; cr. E. of Leicester 1837.

1771 - 4 [dep. England Aug. 1771] Turin (winter 1771 - 2), Macerata (Apr. 1772), Rome (by end Apr. - ); Florence (by Nov. 1773), Rome, Naples (Jan. 1774), Florence, Genoa, Turin, Milan, Rome (Apr.) [Vienna; England by Jul.]

Coke went abroad on leaving Eton in 1771, already a fashionable and handsome young man. His £;200 travel allowance was increased by £;500 a year from his great-aunt, the Dowager Countess of Leicester.1 During the winter of 1771 - 2 he attended the Academy at Turin, where he met his Norfolk acquaintances Thomas Kerrich and Martin Folkes Rishton. On 17 April 1772 Coke witnessed the Young Pretender's marriage at Macerata and apparently followed the couple to Rome. His attachment to the young Countess of Albany (as the Stuart bride became known) was rewarded with a white cockade and allegedly it was she who commissioned from Batoni the splendid whole-length portrait of Coke (dated 1774), standing before the Vatican Ariadne, whose features were said to resemble her own (Holkham; Clark/Bowron, 377). Horace Walpole said she had 'permitted [Coke] to have her picture'.2

Coke's subsequent itinerary is not entirely clear. In November 1773, eighteen months after coming to Rome from Macerata, he was in Florence, having an amicable reunion with his relation Lady Mary Coke who thought him 'a very pretty man'. From Rome at some stage Coke went to Naples and visited Herculaneum with, it has been said, his old friend Francis Rawdon, in which case the journey occurred in January 1774, see Rawdon. The otherwise unknown painter Heygate painted them with Lord Mountmorres scaling Vesuvius (the picture sold in 1887). Coke was back in Florence for the Carnival in 1774 and afterwards intended to return home, but, according to Kerrich, 'finding ye weather stormy and himself not very well, he changed his plan, and determined to take ye way by land through France, and came by Genoa in his return to Turin'. There Coke again met Kerrich who said they 'ran about to see Milan together, though as his disorder turned out an ague he could not accompany us in all our expeditions'. In April 1774 Coke was back in Rome, whence he made a three-day excursion to Tivoli with Kerrich and others. It was probably at this time that he shared an audience with the Pope (Clement XIV) with Kerrich. Coke left Italy soon after, returning home through Vienna where, according to Sir Robert Keith, he 'made considerable havock amongst the young Beauties'. He was in England by July 1774.

Although better known abroad for his appearance than for his connoisseurship, 'le bel Anglais' collected gems and casts. In January 1774 Jenkins reported that Coke had 'run away with the Cameo of the Claudius', and a fine sardonyx of Minerva which he acquired remains at Holkham, together with a mosaic of an animal combat from Hadrian's Villa.3 From the tomb of Nonius the Senator he acquired a precious antique ring (at Cannon Hall, Barnsley, in 1908). He also commissioned from Thomas Banks the Death of Germanicus of 1774 (Holkham).4

1. See Stirling, Coke of Norfolk, 1:107 - 24. Moore 1985, 66 - 8. 2. Wal.Corr., 39:180. 3. Townley MSS (Jenkins, 19 Jan. 1774). 4. Bell, Banks, 35.