surveyed the result of his long years of labour and achievement, Lord Leicester lamented: "It is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one's own country. I look around not a house to be seen but my own. I am Giant of Giant Castle and have ate up all my neighbours my nearest neighbour is the King of Denmark." Coke, who had been made Earl of Leicester on 9 May 1744, died on 20 April 1759, five years before the completion of Holkham Hall, having never fully recovered his financial losses. Thereafter, his wife Lady Margaret oversaw the completion and furnishing of the house. He had been predeceased by his only son, the rake Edward Coke, Viscount Coke (1719–1753), whose marriage to the diarist Mary Campbell proved disastrous – he virtually imprisoned her at Holkham Hall – and childless. Therefore, Holkham Hall was inherited by Thomas Coke's nephew Wenman Roberts, the son of Major Philip Roberts and Thomas's sister Anne Coke. Wenman took the name of Coke after inheriting the Coke estates and was succeeded on his death in 1776 by his son, another Thomas Coke, later 1st Earl of Leicester of Holkham, the MP and agricultural reformer. See also Minster Lovell Hall References Leicester, Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester, Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of People from Holkham Earls of Leicester Leicester, Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for Norfolk Thomas Coke Fellows of the Royal Society English landowners United Kingdom Postmasters General Peers of Great Britain created by George II Grand Masters of the Premier Grand Lodge of England