This alert vitality captivated her grandfather, who was called ‘Coke of Norfolk’ throughout the country and ‘King Coke’ by everyone in Norfolk. Widely regarded as the most important and powerful commoner in England, Thomas Coke might have had a peerage for the asking; indeed, King George III was eager enough to bestow one. Yet this would have meant Coke giving up his independence and his seat in the House of Commons where he represented the county of Norfolk. He saw no merit in doing so.
Thomas Coke had three daughters, Jane, Anne and Elizabeth. They were all acknowledged beauties and all well educated; his late wife had seen to that when it became obvious there would be no male heir.2 In addition to these advantages, Mr Coke had dowered his girls generously so that their eligibility in the marriage market was assured, though, in the event, all three married for love.3 Since their sex prevented them from inheriting a title from their father, he therefore resisted ennoblement – once to the extent of openly rebuffing the King – spoke his mind freely and often bluntly, and owed allegiance to no man he felt had not earned his respect.
Coke’s home in Norfolk was Holkham Hall, a Palladian mansion more like a palace than the home of a country squire. Here, in the great house where her mother had grown up, Jane spent much of her childhood.
Jane’s mother, Thomas Coke’s eldest daughter Jane, was known as Lady Andover, a form of address she used for the remainder of her life. The title was retained from a previous (childless) marriage which had ended in tragedy when she was twenty-one. Her husband Lord Andover had been killed as the result of a shooting accident that she had accurately foreseen in a dream. She had rushed out to him upon hearing the news, and almost his last words to her were: ‘My dear, your dream has come true!’4 It was not her only successful prediction and, curiously, her second husband had a similar ability, claiming that he owed his first success to a voice in a dream which told him to change the direction in which his ship was headed and even the course to steer.5
Captain Henry Digby, Jane’s father, was a fair, handsome and much decorated naval hero. Prior to his marriage to Lady Andover he had distinguished himself at Trafalgar as commander of HMS Africa. In a letter to his uncle, the Hon. R. Digby (later Lord Digby), at Minterne he wrote of his part in the battle:
HMS Africa at sea off the Straits November 1, 1805
My dear Uncle,
I write merely to say I am well, after having been closely engaged for 6 hours on 21st October. For details, being busy to the greatest degree, I have lost all my masts in consequence of the action and my ship is otherwise cut to pieces but sound in the bottom. My killed and wounded number 63, and many of the latter I shall lose if I do not get into port …
After passing through the line in which position I brought down the fore masts of Santisima Trinidad mounting 140 guns, after which I engaged with pistol shot L’Intrépide 74 guns, which afterwards was struck and burnt, Orion and Conqueror coming up. A little boy that stayed with me is safe. Twice on the poop I was left alone, all about me being killed or wounded. I am very deaf.6
Before Trafalgar he had been posted aboard the frigate Aurora and in less than two years had captured six French privateers (thanks to the voice in his dream) and one corvette, L’Egalité, making a total of 144 guns and 744 men, besides 48 merchant ships taken or sunk. In command of the Leviathan he assisted in the capture of the island of Minorca. Later he captured two French men-of-war, Le Dépit and La Courage; and in 1799 two Spanish frigates Thetis and Brigide, which carried between them 3 million dollars in gold. Fifty military wagons were needed to convey the spoils from Plymouth Dock to the Citadel. By the time he was thirty, Captain Digby had earned himself over £57,000 in prize money alone, and another £7,000 over the next five years.7
At the time of Jane’s birth Captain Digby owned Forston House, a pleasant country property in Dorset. It overlooked the famous Cerne Abbas giant and was close to his uncle’s estate, Minterne. It was because of her father’s frequent absences at sea, and her mother’s natural wish to spend time ‘at home’ at Holkham while he was away, that Jane and her two younger brothers, Edward and Kenelm, were often at their grandfather’s house and, like their mother, came to regard Holkham as a second home. Here the eleven children of Lady Andover’s sister Anne and her husband, Lord Anson, were also educated in the capacious schoolroom. Jane was particularly close to her Anson cousins Henry and Fanny who were nearest to her in age.
Those first decades of the nineteenth century were a golden era for the rich. Vast country houses surrounded by shaved lawns and pleasure gardens, with artificial lakes, follies and deer parks, stables full of hunters, hacks and work-horses, and coach-houses full of elegant equipages, provided work and livings for hundreds of servants indoors and out. Holkham was no exception.
Tom Coke could not be described as extravagant; he spent shrewdly enough, but no visitor ever walked through the deliberately unpretentious front entrance of Holkham Hall without being stunned at what lay within. The massive entrance hall, modelled on a Roman temple of justice, is an extravaganza of marble, alabaster and carved stone. Fluted Ionic columns support the domed Inigo Jones roof, a gilded crown for this masterpiece of light and space. Around the walls are bas-relief and marble sculptures, and the classical theme continues throughout the house. Holkham was – and remains – richly endowed with Greek and Roman statuary, but it is also famous for its art collection, its rich and rare furnishings and sumptuous Genoese velvet hangings, and its incomparable library. It is still regarded, along with Chatsworth, Blenheim, Badminton and Burghley, as one of the truly great houses of England.
Such grandeur, however, was not the brainchild of Jane’s grandfather. The property was bought in 1610 by Edward Coke, the famous jurist, who became Lord Chief Justice. The first Earl of Leicester built the present house in 1734 and, when the direct line failed, the estate, but not the title, passed to Thomas William Coke. If Thomas Coke ever was inclined towards prodigality, the money was spent on his lands rather than his house. Politically he was a staunch Whig, but first and foremost he was a dedicated agricultural reformer, who spent a fortune8 transforming a rugged wasteland ‘where two rabbits fought over a single blade of grass’ into a fertile, productive, ‘scientifically controlled’ region famous for its barley soil.9 He convinced men of substance to invest in long-leases of farms and to ‘induce their sons, after [reading] Greek and Latin in public schools, to put themselves under the tuition of well-informed practical farmers to be competent for management.’10 It is no exaggeration to say that this far-sighted man was the architect of modern farming methods throughout the world.
His livestock, particularly sheep, were selectively bred for meat, breeding stock and wool. His annual sheep-shearing, known as Coke’s Clippings, became a sort of four-day county fair which attracted thousands of sightseers from all over the country, and overseas. Exhibitions of every aspect of rural industry, from animal husbandry to flax weaving and the building of agricultural cottages, were presented. Conferences were held during which papers were given on agricultural matters such as crop rotation and stock-breeding, and these were a magnet for the guests assembled at Holkham for the Clippings, almost all of them titled.11 The autumn and winter shooting parties at Holkham included royalty and top political figures of the Whig Party, as well as sporting squires, and Mr Coke’s hospitality was legendary.
Despite his leaning towards outdoor pursuits, Thomas Coke did not neglect the arts. Educated at Eton (where on one occasion, to avoid being caught poaching on the neighbouring royal estates, he swam the River Thames with a hare in his mouth),