appointed by Coke's uncle, retired in 1782, Coke failed to replace him until 1816. This replacement was Francis Blaikie, a Scottish man who had previously been employed as estate steward for Lord Chesterfield. Blaikie paid close attention to where farms were doing badly or could do better, but often struggled to deal with Coke. Coke lacked financial sense in matters other than the agricultural, on one occasion selling all his land near Manchester. It wasn't until 20 years later that Blaikie became aware of this, after receiving a query from the new owners about the mineral rights. Blaikie travelled to Manchester to meet the solicitor who had handled the sale, finding not only poorly drafted conveyances but that all the sold land had been rich in coal. In the early 18th century, farmland was run through an open field system, which were commonly overstocked and made trying experimental methods very difficult; enclosed farms, on the other hand, were higher quality and useful for experimentation, with the result that they commanded a rent almost double a similarly sized open field. Compounding this problem, many of the enclosures were split up into strips, with the result that ownership was unclear. Between 1776 and 1816, Coke rapidly bought strips of land near his estates and had them enclosed. Much of this came during the Napoleonic Wars when grain prices (and therefore farming profits) peaked. Coke was influenced by "Turnip" Townshend, who had owned a nearby estate and promoted crop rotation and farm improvement. Along with enclosure, marling and improved grasses, Townshend's improvements resulted in "a course of husbandry utterly unlike that practised a hundred years ago". Coke's big improvements came in two areas; grasses and husbandry. He pioneered the use of cocksfoot and lucerne as grass and feed respectively, with the result that by 1793 he was claiming to have 2,400 sheep in Holkham, as opposed to the 700 kept when he inherited the estates. The husbandry involved the milking comparisons of various types of cow, along with the first planting of Scottish turnips, which are "a good table vegetable being more palatable and nutritious and not so watery as the Norfolk variety". His prime area of experimentation was on the selective breeding for sheep. The most common sheep in the area was the Norfolk Horn, which was long-legged and slow to mature. Coke became a promoter of the English Leicester, a breed