Charles James Fox
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Charles James Fox |
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.
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. When Rockingham then became Prime Minister in
1782, Fox was made the first
Foreign Secretary. 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 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 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 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. He never achieved his wish of being laid to rest in
Chertsey where he had lived, because the nation demanded that he be buried in
Westminster Abbey. He is remembered in that town by a
bust on a high
plinth, erected in 2006 in a new development by the
railway station.
*
Free ebook of Charles James Fox at
Project Gutenberg**
Free ebook of History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second at
Project Gutenberg*
Guardian article on Fox as the 200th anniversary of his death approaches
