The French Revolution affected Fox profoundly. Together with almost all his countrymen he welcomed the meeting of the states-general in 1789 as the downfall of a despotism hostile to Great Britain. But when the development of the Revolution caused a general reaction, he adhered stoutly to his opinion that the Revolution was essentially just and ought not to be condemned for its errors or even for its crimes. As a natural consequence he was the steady opponent of Pitt’s foreign policy, which he condemned as a species of crusade against freedom in the interest of despotism. Between 1790 and 1800 his unpopularity reached its height. He was left almost alone in parliament, and was denounced as the enemy of his country. On the 6th of May 1791 occurred the painful scene in the House of Commons, in which Burke renounced his friendship. In 1792 there was some vague talk of a coalition between him and Pitt, which came to nothing. It should be noted that the scene with Burke took place in the course of the debate on the Quebec Bill, in which Fox displayed real statesmanship by criticizing the division of Upper from Lower Canada, and other provisions of the bill, which in the end proved so injurious as to be unworkable. In this year he carried the Libel Bill. In 1792 his ally, the duke of Portland, and most of his party left him. In 1797 he withdrew from parliament, and only came forward in 1798 to reaffirm the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people at a great Whig dinner. On the 9th of May he was dismissed from the privy council.
The interval of secession was perhaps the happiest in his life. In 1783 he formed a connexion with Elizabeth Bridget Cane, commonly known as Mrs Armstead or Armistead, an amiable and well-mannered woman to whom he was passionately attached. In company with her he established himself at St Anne’s Hill near Chertsey in Surrey. In 1795 he married her privately, but did not avow his marriage till 1802. In his letters he spoke of her always as Mrs Armistead, and some of his friends—Mr Coke of Holkham, afterwards Lord Leicester, with whom he stayed every year, being one of them—would not invite her to their houses. It is hard to explain this solitary instance of shabby conduct in a thoroughly generous man towards a person to whom he was unalterably attached and who fully deserved his affection. Fox’s time at St Anne’s was largely spent in gardening, in the enjoyment of the country, and in correspondence on literary subjects with his nephew, the 3rd Lord Holland, and with Gilbert Wakefield, the editor of Euripides. His letters show that he had a very sincere love for, and an enlightened appreciation of, good literature. Greek and Italian were his first favourites, but he was well read in English literature and in French, and acquired some knowledge of Spanish. His favourite authors were Euripides, Virgil and Racine, whom he defends against the stock criticisms of the admirers of Corneille with equal zeal and insight.
Fox reappeared in parliament to take part in the vote of censure on ministers for declining Napoleon’s overtures for a peace. The fall of Pitt’s first ministry and the formation of the Addington cabinet, the peace of Amiens, and the establishment of Napoleon as first consul with all the powers of a military despot, seemed to offer Fox a chance of resuming power in public life. The struggle with Jacobinism was over, and he could have no hesitation in supporting resistance to a successful general who ruled by the sword, and who pursued a policy of perpetual aggression. During 1802 he visited Paris in company with his wife. An account of his journey was published in 1811 by his secretary, Mr Trotter, in an otherwise poor book of reminiscence. It gives an attractive picture of Fox’s good-humour, and of his enjoyment of the “species of minor comedy which is constantly exhibited in common life.” His main purpose in visiting Paris was to superintend the transcription of the correspondence of Barillon, which he needed for his proposed life of James II. The book was never finished, but the fragment he completed was published in 1808, and was translated into French by Armand Carrel in 1846. Fox was not favourably impressed by Napoleon. He saw a good deal of French society, and was himself much admired for his hearty defence of his rival Pitt against a foolish charge of encouraging plots for Napoleon’s assassination. On his return he resumed his regular attendance in the House of Commons. The history of the renewal of the war, of the fall of Addington’s ministry, and of the formation of Pitt’s second administration is so fully dealt with in the article on Pitt (q.v.) that it need not be repeated here.
The death of Pitt left Fox so manifestly the foremost man in public life that the king could no longer hope to exclude him from office. The formation of a ministry was entrusted by the king to Lord Grenville, but when he named Fox as his proposed secretary of state for foreign affairs George III. accepted him without demur. Indeed his hostility seems to a large extent to have died out. A long period of office might now have appeared to lie before Fox, but his health was undermined. Had he lived it may be considered as certain that the war with Napoleon would have been conducted with a vigour which was much wanting during the next few years. In domestic politics Fox had no time to do more than insist on the abolition of the slave trade. He, like Pitt, was compelled to bow to the king’s invincible determination not to allow the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. When a French adventurer calling himself Guillet de la Gevrillière, whom Fox at first “did the honour to take for a spy,” came to him with a scheme for the murder of Napoleon, he sent a warning on the 20th of February to Talleyrand. The incident gave him an opportunity for reopening negotiations for peace. A correspondence ensued, and British envoys were sent to Paris. But Fox was soon convinced that the French ministers were playing a false game. He was resolved not to treat apart from Russia, then the ally of Great Britain, nor to consent to the surrender of Sicily, which Napoleon insisted upon, unless full compensation could be obtained for King Ferdinand. The later stages of the negotiation were not directed by Fox, but by colleagues who took over his work at the foreign office when his health began to fail in the summer of 1806. He showed symptoms of dropsy, and operations only procured him temporary relief. After carrying his motion for the abolition of the slave trade on the 10th of June, he was forced to give up attendance in parliament, and he died in the house of the duke of Devonshire, at Chiswick, on the 13th of September 1806. His wife survived him till the 8th of July 1842. No children were born of the marriage. Fox is buried in Westminster Abbey by the side of Pitt.
The striking personal appearance of Fox has been rendered very familiar by portraits and by innumerable caricatures. The latter were no doubt deliberately exaggerated, and yet a comparison between the head of Fox in Sayer’s plate “Carlo Khan’s triumphal entry into Leadenhall,” and in Abbot’s portrait, shows that the caricaturist did not depart from the original. Fox was twice painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, once when young in a group with Lady Sarah Bunbury and Lady Susan Strangeways, and once at full length. A half-length portrait by the German painter, Karl Anton Hickel, is in the National Portrait Gallery, where there is also a terra-cotta bust by Nollekens.
Authorities.—The materials for a life of Fox were first collected by his nephew, Lord Holland, and were then revised and rearranged by Mr Allen and Lord John Russell. These materials appear as Memoirs and Correspondence of C.J. Fox (London, 1853-1857). On them Lord John Russell based his Life and Times of C.J. Fox (London, 1859-1866); Sir G.O. Trevelyan’s Early History of C.J. Fox (London. 1880) brings new evidence; Charles James Fox, a Political Study, by J.L. Le B. Hammond (London, 1903), is a series of studies written by an extreme admirer. His Speeches were collected and published in 1815. The newspaper articles (e.g. in The Times) published on the occasion of the centenary of his death contain interesting appreciations. See also Lloyd Sanders, The Holland House Circle (1908).
(D. H.)
FOX, EDWARD (c. 1496-1538), bishop of Hereford, was born about 1496 at Dursley in Gloucestershire; he is said on very doubtful authority to have been related to Richard Fox (q.v.). From Eton he proceeded to King’s College, Cambridge, and after graduating was made secretary to Wolsey. In 1528 he was sent with Gardiner to Rome to obtain from Clement VII. a decretal commission for the trial and decision of the case between Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon. On his return he was elected provost of King’s College, and in August 1529 was the means of conveying to the king Cranmer’s historic advice that he should apply to the universities of Europe rather than to the pope. This introduction led eventually to Cranmer’s promotion over Fox’s head to the archbishopric of Canterbury. After a brief mission to Paris in October 1529, Fox in January 1530 befriended Latimer at Cambridge and took an active part in persuading that university and Oxford to decide in the king’s favour. He was sent to employ similar methods of persuasion at the French universities in 1530-1531, and was also engaged in negotiating a closer league between England and France. In April 1533 he was prolocutor of convocation when it decided against the validity of Henry’s marriage with Catherine, and in 1534 published his treatise De vera differentia regiae potestatis et ecclesiae (second ed. 1538, English transl. 1548). Various ecclesiastical preferments were now granted him, including the archdeaconry of Leicester (1531) and the bishopric of Hereford (1535). In 1535-1536 he was sent to Germany to discuss the basis of a political and theological understanding with the Lutheran princes and divines, and had several interviews with Luther, who could not be persuaded of the justice of Henry VIII.’s divorce. The principal result of the mission was the Wittenberg articles of 1536, which had no slight influence on the English Ten Articles of the same year. Bucer dedicated to him in 1536 his Commentaries on the Gospels, and Fox’s Protestantism was also illustrated by his patronage of Alexander Aless, whom he defended before Convocation. Fox is credited with the authorship of several proverbial sayings, such as “the surest way to peace is a constant preparedness for war” and “time and I will challenge any two in the world.” The former at any rate is only a variation of the Latin si vis pacem, para bellum, and probably the latter is not more original in Fox than in Philip II., to whom it is usually ascribed. Fox died on the 8th of May 1538 and was buried in the church of St Mary Mounthaw, London. His chief distinction is perhaps that he was the most Lutheran of Henry VIII.’s bishops, and was largely responsible for the Ten Articles of 1536.
See Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vols. iv.-xiv.; Cooper’s Athenae Cantabrigienses; Dict. Nat. Biogr.; R.W. Dixon’s Church History; G. Mentz, Die Wittenberger Artikel von 1536 (1905).