Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/234

  Elmesthorpe, Leicestershire, and Rushton, Northamptonshire, long the residence of his descendants. He gave each of his numerous daughters 10,000l. on marriage, leaving his son a rent roll of above 12,000l. a year. He died 20 Oct. 1626, in his sixty-sixth year, at his manor house at Comb Nevill in Kingston, Surrey, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, where a stately monument with an elaborate inscription was erected to him. His funeral sermon was preached by the celebrated Dr. Donne. His widow remarried, 6 July 1630, Henry (Carey), fourth lord Hunsdon, first earl of Dover, and, dying 24 Dec. 1648, was buried with her first husband at St. Paul's. It has been well said of him, ‘that his spreading boughs and fair branches have given both shade and shelter to some of the goodliest families of England,’ and such truly was the case. His sons-in-law were (1) Charles (Howard), second earl of Nottingham; (2) Sir Hatton Fermor, ancestor of the Earls of Pomfret; (3) John Ramsay, created Earl of Holdernesse; (4) Montagu (Bertie), second earl of Lindsey, ancestor of the dukes of Ancaster; (5) John (Carey), second earl of Dover; (6) Thomas Fanshawe, created Viscount Fanshawe; and (7) Hon. James Sheffield, son of the Earl of Mulgrave. His only surviving son and heir, Charles Cokayne, having married Lady Mary O'Brien, first daughter and coheiress of Henry, fifth earl of Thomond, was on 11 Aug. 1642 created Viscount Cullen, co. Tipperary, a dignity which became extinct (or dormant) 21 Aug. 1810, by the death of Borlase, the sixth viscount, the last heir male of his body.

[Wilford's Memorials; Barksdale's Memorials; Dugdale's St. Paul's, 2nd edit. pp. 69, 137; Payne Fisher's Tombes of St. Paul's; Lodge's Irish Peerage, edit. 1789, iv. 329; Funeral Certificates, 1599 and 1626, at College of Arms; Markham's Voyages of William Baffin, &c.]   COKE, DANIEL PARKER (1745–1825), politician, born on 17 July 1745, was the only son of Thomas Coke, barrister-at-law, a younger member of the Cokes of Trusley, whose settlement in Derbyshire dates from the reign of Edward lit. By the death of his grand-uncle, William Coke, without male issue, he became, after his father, the chief representative of the family, though this distinction was not accompanied by any addition of fortune, the patrimonial estate of Trusley descending in the female line. He was educated under the Rev. Thomas Manlove, and matriculated at All Souls, Oxford, in 1762; B.A. 1769, M.A. 1772. He was called to the bar and practised for many years on the midland circuit. He made his first appearance in the House of Commons in 1775 as member for Derby, which he represented till 1780. At the general election in that year he visited the neighbouring town of Nottingham to assist the tory candidate Sir Edward Every, brought forward by the tory party, and was himself nominated and elected along with Mr. Robert Smith (whig) [q. v.], afterwards Lord Carrington. He sat for Nottingham till 1812. Six years later he resigned the chairmanship of the quarter sessions for the county of Derby, and finally withdrew from public life. He died at his house, The College, Derby, on 6 Dec. 1825, aged 80, and was buried in the local church of All Saints. He was never married.

In Coke's time the French revolution was the chief political topic. At the general election in 1802 the excitement in Nottingham was so great that he suffered personal violence and was obliged to leave the town. The polling went against him, but a committee of the House of Commons declared the election void for want of freedom, and, on the issue of a new writ, he was re-elected. The alleged supineness of the mayor and local authorities in preserving order led him to promote a bill extending the jurisdiction of the county magistrates to the borough; the measure, which ultimately became law, was an obvious blow to whig interests, and was earnestly opposed by the whig leader, Fox. But though faithful to his party Coke was not a bigoted politician. He held a brief for the crown in the prosecution of the ringleaders of the Church and King mob, which in 1791 sacked Dr. Priestley's house in Birmingham, and said in opening the case: 'Had I been in Birmingham when his (Dr. Priestley's) property was attacked, I would have lost my life in his defence, and this sentiment I hold all the more strongly because I do differ from him.' At the dose of the American war he was appointed one of the commissioners for settling the American claims, but this position he shortly afterwards resigned.

He was a frequent speaker in the House of Commons, particularly during the administration of Lord North, and, considering his political connections, some of his views were decidedly untraditional. Thus during a financial discussion (4 Dec. 1783) he suggested the taxation of the stalls of deans and prebends, whom he characterised as the most useless of ecclesiastics. He proposed a like charge on church pews appropriated to private families and municipal corporations; and in recommending a tax on gravestones he condemned, on sanitary grounds, the burial of the dead in churches. In the 