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.