Coke of Norfolk was a landed magnate who lived in regal
style. 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. In
the country he drove six horses. In town only the King did this.
Coke despised George III, chiefly on account of his American
policy, and to avoid the reproach of rivaling the King's estate,
he took joy in driving past the palace in London with a donkey as
his sixth animal and in flicking his whip at the King. When he
was offered a peerage by the King he denounced with fiery wrath
the minister through whom it was offered as attempting to bribe
him. Coke declared that if one of the King's ministers held up a
hat in the House of Commons and said that it was a green bag the
majority of the members would solemnly vote that it was a green
bag. The bribery which brought this blind obedience of Toryism
filled Coke with fury. In youth he had been taught never to trust
a Tory and he could say "I never have and, by God, I never will.
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