The ploughs of Norfolk were, as in many other counties, absurdly over-horsed, from three to five being used when only two were necessary; so Coke set the example of using two whenever possible, and won a bet with Sir John Sebright by ploughing an acre of stiff land in Hertfordshire in a day with a pair of horses. He transformed the bleak bare countryside by planting 50 acres of trees every year until he had 3,000 acres well covered, and in 1832 had probably the unique experience of embarking in a ship which was built of oak grown from the acorns he had himself planted.[502] Between 1776 and 1842 (the date of his death) he is said to have spent L536,992 on improving his estate, without reckoning the large sums spent on his house and demesne, the home farm, and his marsh farm of 459 acres. This expenditure paid in the long run, but when he entered upon it, it must have seemed very doubtful if this would be the case. A good understanding between landlord and tenant was the basis of his policy, and to further this he let his farms on long leases, at moderate rents, with few restrictions. When farmers improved their holdings on his estate the rent was not raised on them, so that the estate benefited greatly, and good tenants were often rewarded by having excellent houses built for them; so good, indeed, that his political opponents the Tories, whom he, as a staunch Whig detested, made it one of their complaints against him that he built palaces for farmhouses. At first he met with that stolid opposition to progress which seems the particular characteristic of the farmer. For sixteen years no one followed him in the use of the drill, though it was no new thing; and when it was adopted he reckoned its use spread at the rate of a mile a year. Yet eventually he had his reward; his estate came to command the pick of English tenant farmers, who never left it except through old age, and would never live under any other landlord. Even the Radical Cobbett, to whom, as to most of his party, landlords were, and are, the objects of inveterate hatred, said that every one who knew him spoke of him with affection. Coke was the first to distinguish between the adaptability of the different kinds of grass seeds to different soils, and thereby made the hitherto barren lands of his estate better pasture land than that of many rich counties. Carelessness about the quality of grasses sown was universal for a long time. The farmer took his seeds from his own foul hayrick, or sent to his neighbour for a supply of rubbish; even Bakewell derived his stock from his hayloft. It was not until the Society for the Encouragement of Arts offered prizes for clean hay seeds that some improvement was noticeable. In Norfolk, as in other parts of England, there was at this time a strong prejudice against potatoes; the villagers of Holkham refused to have anything to do with them, but Coke's invincible persistency overcame