Rt. Hon. 'Charles James Fox' (
24 January,
1749 –
13 September,
1806) was a prominent
British Whig politician. He is noted as an anti-slavery campaigner, a supporter of
American independence from Britain, and as a supporter of the
French Revolution. He held several senior government offices, including being Britain's first
Foreign Secretary.
Fox was the third son of
Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland, one of the older generation of self-aggrandizing Whigs. His mother was Lady
Caroline Lennox, daughter of
Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond. Fox was educated at
Eton and
Hertford College, Oxford. He was over-indulged by his father and quickly entered into an extravagant and dissolute lifestyle - in
1774 he was £140,000 in debt. Fox was also a leader of fashion early on, and after a tour of Europe brought back to London the extravagant male fashions then popular at the French court - frilly lace, brocade, cosmetics, red heels etc. This was the costume of the
'Macaronis', and at nineteen Fox was the acknowledged leader of this group.
Parliament
In
1768, Fox became
MP for
Midhurst although he was legally too young. He supported
Grafton and his attacks on the radical
John Wilkes. A staunch supporter of Britain's North American
colonies, the town of
Foxborough in
Massachusetts was named in his honour. Fox was made a junior Lord of the
Admiralty by
Lord North in
1770, but he resigned in January
1772 in order to vote against the
Royal Marriages Act, although he was reappointed to a government post at the Treasury in December. He was finally dismissed by North in February 1774, following pressure from
George III.
Out of government, Fox became more radical, progressing from his friendship of
Edmund Burke to becoming a leader of the
Rockinghamite Whigs. Fox won the seat of
Westminster in
1780 and showed his support for Parliamentary reform.
By 1780, Fox had become the real leader of the Opposition to, and the greatest enemy of, King George III. The king was approaching the greatest crisis of his reign. Parliament was resolved to end the American war; and it became a question, how much of his authority would be permanently forfeited by the failure of his policy? Nobody seriously thought of deposing the King, but he seriously thought of abdicating, because he could not endure the loss of national prestige. [Pares p 120]
When Rockingham then became Prime Minister in
1782, Fox was made the first
Foreign Secretary. About ending the war, there could be no dispute; but Rockingham demanded three measures which were designed to reduce the king's power permanently by limiting the rewards he could offer to members of parliament and their constituents.[Pares p 121] When Rockingham died (
July 1 1782), Fox unwisely resigned over the appointment of
Lord Shelburne as Prime Minister. In February
1783 Fox formed an alliance of convenience with North, known as the
Fox-North Coalition, to regain power.
Fox-North Coalition
Fox and North came to power in April
1783 despite the King's resistance; although the
Duke of Portland actually headed the government, the two men were both secretaries of state. The ambitions of both Fox and North were blunted by the active efforts of the King and they angered him further with their open support of the
Prince of Wales, future Prince Regent. They were both driven from office by the efforts of the King's supporters following the failure of Fox's
East India Bill in December. The
1784 general election was a sad defeat for the opposition. In his own constituency of Westminster the contest was fierce with Fox facing defeat and a massive campaign in his favour was run by
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. In the end Fox was re-elected by a very slender margin, but legal challenges prevented a final declaration of the result for over a year. In the meantime, Fox sat for the Scottish
pocket borough of
Tain or Northern Burghs, for which he was qualified by being made an unlikely burgess of
Kirkwall in
Orkney (which was one of the Burghs in the
district).
He was reputed to be the anonymous author of ''An Essay Upon Wind; with Curious Anecdotes of Eminent Peteurs. Humbly Dedicated to the Lord Chancellor'' (1787).
He remained a force in the Whigs, and his support of the
French Revolution (
1789) led to a split in the Whigs between the supporters of the revolution and the others who joined
William Pitt the Younger, leaving the opposition as no more than sixty MPs. Fox had become convinced that the King and the establishment were more of a threat to the constitution than radical politics and protested against the curtailment of liberties associated with the war against France. In
1792 Fox saw through the only piece of substantial legislation in his career, the
Libel Act, which restored to juries the right to decide what was libel and whether a defendant was guilty. Fox married his mistress,
Elizabeth Armistead, in
1795 but did not make this fact public until
1802.
Fox and much of the opposition deliberately withdrew from Parliament from
1797. He returned following the
Treaty of Amiens of
1802 and having assisted in the replacement of
Henry Addington, when Pitt was succeeded by
Grenville he was made Foreign Secretary in the "
Ministry of all the Talents".
Fox died in
Chiswick, while still in office; though he wished to be laid to rest in
Chertsey where he had lived, the nation demanded that he be buried in
Westminster Abbey. He is remembered in Chertsey by a
bust on a high
plinth, erected in 2006 in a new development by the
railway station. Fox is also commemorated in a termly dinner held in his honour at his ''alma mater''
Hertford College, Oxford by students of English, History and the Romance Languages.
Ancestry
----
Bibliography
★ Richard Pares; ''King George III and the Politicians'' (1953)
online edition
★ L. G. Mitchell. ''Charles James Fox'' (1992)
★ Loren Dudley Reid. ''Charles James Fox: A Man for the People'' (1969)
★
Trevelyan, George Otto. ''George the Third and Charles Fox: The Concluding Part of the American Revolution.'' (1912) 2 vol
online edition vol 1,
online edition v2
★ Trevelyan, George Otto.''The Early History of Charles James Fox'' (1880)
online edition
★ J. Steven Watson; ''The Reign of George III, 1760-1815,'' 1960, the standard scholarly history
online edition
Primary sources
★ Charles James Fox. ''The Speeches of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox in the House of Commons'' (1853); 862 pages;
online edition
External links
★
★
★
★
Guardian article on Fox as the 200th anniversary of his death approaches
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