their parks and gardens, or hunting or fishing. Nor did they stay away
for a few days only. The absence was for weeks or even months.

It is to the credit of Whig leaders in England, landowners and
aristocrats as they were, that they supported with passion the American
cause. In America, where the forces of the Revolution were in control,
the Loyalist who dared to be bold for his opinions was likely to be
tarred and feathered and to lose his property. There was an embittered
intolerance. In England, however, it was an open question in society
whether to be for or against the American cause. The Duke of Richmond,
a great grandson of Charles II, said in the House of Lords that under no
code should the fighting Americans be considered traitors. What they did
was "perfectly justifiable in every possible political and moral
sense." All the world knows that Chatham and Burke and Fox urged the
conciliation of America and hundreds took the same stand. Burke said of
General Conway, a man of position, that when he secured a majority in
the House of Commons against the Stamp Act his face shone as the face of
an angel. Since the bishops almost to a man voted with the King, Conway
attacked them as in this untrue to their high office. Sir George Savile,
whose benevolence, supported by great wealth, made him widely respected
and loved, said that the Americans were right in appealing to arms. Coke
of Norfolk was a landed magnate who lived in regal style. His seat of
Holkham was one of those great new palaces which the age reared at
such elaborate cost. It was full of beautiful things--the art of
Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Van Dyke, rare manuscripts, books,
and tapestries. So magnificent was Coke that a legend long ran that his
horses were shod with gold and that the wheels of his chariots were of
solid silver. In the country he drove six horses. In town only the King
did this. Coke despised George III, chiefly on account of his American
policy, and to avoid the reproach of rivaling the King's estate, he
took joy in driving past the palace in London with a donkey as his
sixth animal and in flicking his whip at the King. When he was offered
a peerage by the King he denounced with fiery wrath the minister through
whom it was offered as attempting to bribe him. Coke declared that if
one of the King's ministers held up a hat in the House of Commons and
said that it was a green bag the majority of the members would solemnly
vote that