Biography of Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke 1795-1873

On 25th October 1775 [her father] Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester (age 21) and [her mother] Jane Dutton (age 21) were married at Sherborne, Gloucestershire.

On 17th April 1795 Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke was born to Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester (age 40) and Jane Dutton (age 41).

On 2nd June 1800 [her mother] Jane Dutton (age 46) died at Bath, Somerset [Map]. Monument in Church of St Mary the Virgin, Tittleshall [Map] sculpted by Joseph Nollekens (age 62). Flat obelisk background. Pedestal with inscription and supporting the carving which is centred around a broken column with standing figure of woman leaning on it in front of opened book. Angel on cloud above and putto below holding up a flaming heart.

Jane Dutton: On 29th November 1753 she was born to James Lenox Dutton and Jane Bond at Sherborne, Gloucestershire. On 25th October 1775 Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester and she were married at Sherborne, Gloucestershire.

In 1822 [her father] Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester (age 67) and [her step-mother] Anne Amelia Keppel Countess Leicester (age 19) were married. The difference in their ages was 48 years. She the daughter of William Charles Keppel 4th Earl Albermarle (age 49) and Elizabeth Southwell Countess Albermarle.

In 1822 John Spencer-Stanhope (age 34) and Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke (age 26) were married. She the daughter of Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester (age 67) and Jane Dutton.

On 28th August 1824 [her daughter] Anna Spencer-Stanhope was born to [her husband] John Spencer-Stanhope (age 37) and Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke (age 29).

On 21st December 1827 [her son] Walter Spencer-Stanhope was born to [her husband] John Spencer-Stanhope (age 40) and Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke (age 32).

On 20th January 1829 [her son] John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope was born to [her husband] John Spencer-Stanhope (age 41) and Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke (age 33).

On 30th June 1842 [her father] Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester (age 88) died. His son [her half-brother] Thomas (age 19) succeeded 2nd Earl of Leicester.

On 29th March 1853 [her son-in-law] Percival Andrée Pickering (age 43) and [her daughter] Anna Spencer-Stanhope (age 28) were married at All Saints Church, Cawthorne [Map].

In 1856 [her son] Walter Spencer-Stanhope (age 28) and [her daughter-in-law] Elizabeth Julia Buxton were married. They had eleven children.

On 10th January 1859 [her son] John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope (age 29) and [her daughter-in-law] Elizabeth King were married after which they lived at Hillhouse, Cawthorne until their house Sandroyd House, Cobham was completed.

On 30th October 1873 Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke (age 78) died.

On 8th November 1873 [her former husband] John Spencer-Stanhope (age 86) died. [her son] Walter Spencer-Stanhope (age 45) inherited Cannon Hall, South Yorkshire.

William de Morgan and his Wife Chapter 5. It is therefore when we turn to the family of Lady Elizabeth, the wife of [her former husband] John Stanhope, that it becomes evident whence came the artistic element which was to develop in both her child and grandchild.

William de Morgan and his Wife Chapter 5. As to his wife [Mary Vere], 'my dearest partner' as he generally termed her. Lady Elizabeth, on first meeting her, pronounced her to be 'one of the most gentle, lovely, loving, and I should think loveable of human beings' — a description which aptly summed up the characteristics, and possibly the limitations, of the beautiful woman who won admiration from all whom she encountered. Throughout the passing years. Time never perceptibly printed a wrinkle on the smoothness of her exquisite skin, nor ruffled her placid outlook on a world where, for her, all combined to make the rough ways pleasant. Gentle, yielding, and charming from youth to age, generous without stint, and extravagant to a fault, she was likewise fastidious in many ways which, to a later generation would appear difficult of credence, but which nevertheless seemed a necessary complement to her own individuality. For one, she had a horror of what, to her, was literally 'filthy lucre' and refused ever to soil her hands by touching money which had been used before. Coins fresh from the bank were kept by her in little round boxes of horn or ivory, suited to their size, or dainty bags of wash-leather tied by coloured ribbon, and to these still cling the faint aroma of the attar of roses which once scented the pieces of shining gold or silver which they guarded so carefully from any chance of vulgar contamination.

William de Morgan and his Wife Chapter 5. The portraits of Edward Rowland which are extant exhibit him as a man of middle age, shrewd and kindly of countenance, and stately of pose; though of necessity they fail to convey the quaint courtliness and old-world dignity with which he impressed all who came in contact with his attractive personality.

'I delight in him,' [wrote Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope enthusiastically, after meeting him for the first time at the date of her daughter's engagement to his son].... 'He is exactly like the description of an old novel of Miss Burney's... an unmistakable high-born and high-bred gentleman, in a brown scratch-wig, all on end on his head, with an indescribable mixture of kind-heartedness, slirewdness and humour in his countenance, standing on his own foundation, and feeling that his son and his family are at least on a par with any nobleman in the land.... He is of the same class of original as Lord Stanhope and Lord Suffolk — a sort of quaint, clever creature.... His pert little daughter-elect cannot think of him without laughing, and he seemed inclined to laugh at himself!'

William de Morgan and his Wife Chapter 5. The story of this lady's family has been told, at length, elsewhere¹; for our present purpose it must suffice to say that she was a direct descendant of Thomas, Earl of Leicester, the great dilettante of the mid-eighteenth century, and coadjutor of another famous dilettante and architect. Lord Burlington. Thomas Coke, who on a barren part of the Norfolk coast erected a palace of Italian art and filled it with choice treasures of antiquity, was the possessor of a master-mind, and left the impress of genius on all with which he dealt. His [her father] nephew and successor, the father of Lady Elizabeth, better known as 'Coke of Norfolk,' although his best energies were concentrated on agriculture and questions of practical utility, exhibited gifts which equalled those of his predecessor.

Note 1. Coke of Norfolk and his friends, by A. M. W. Stirling.