Coke family, Earls of Leicester

The Coke family owned land in Norfolk from the 13th century. Sir Edward Coke (1549-1633), Lord Chief Justice, added greatly to the Norfolk estates, inherited Suffolk property through his wife Bridget Paston of Huntingfield, and purchased estates in Buckinghamshire (Farnham Royal), Dorset (Durweston etc.), London (Bevis Marks), Oxfordshire (Minster Lovell), Somerset (Donyatt) and elsewhere. His eldest son married a Berkeley, inheriting the Portbury estate in Somerset. Property in Derbyshire, Lancashire and Suffolk was settled on, or acquired through marriage by, a younger son of Sir Edward Coke, and used again thereafter to provide for a junior branch of the family.

Thomas Coke (1697-1759), created Earl of Leicester in 1744, married Margaret Tufton, co-heir of the 6th Earl of Thanet, and through her acquired the Dungeness lighthouse dues. He was succeeded by his nephew Wenman Roberts, who took the name of Coke, and whose wife was heiress of Chamberlayne property in Oxfordshire and Warwickshire (Wardington and Long Itchington) as well as of the Denton family's estate in Hillesden in Buckinghamshire.

Out-county properties were sold and the estates concentrated in Norfolk between c.1750 and c.1820. On the sales of certain outlying Norfolk parishes on the Holkham estate in 1910-12, deeds, court rolls and papers from the Holkham muniments were transferred to the new owners of the properties.

Estates in 1883: 44,090 acres in Norfolk, worth £59,578 a year.