(E. W. H.)
FOURMIES, a town of northern France, in the department of Nord, on an affluent of the Sambre, 39 m. S.E. of Valenciennes by rail. Pop. (1906) 13,308. It is one of the chief centres in France for wool combing and spinning, and produces a great variety of cloths. The glass-works of Fourmies date from 1599, and were the first established in the north of France. Iron is worked in the vicinity, and there are important forges and foundries. Enamel-ware is also manufactured. In 1891 labour troubles brought about military intervention and consequent bloodshed. A board of trade arbitration and a school of commerce and industry are among the public institutions.
FOURMONT, ÉTIENNE(1683-1745), French orientalist, was born at Herbelai, near Saint Denis, on the 23rd of June 1683. He studied at the Collège Mazarin, Paris, and afterwards in the Collège Montaigu, where his attention was attracted to Oriental languages. Shortly after leaving the college he published aTraduction du commentaire du Rabbin Abraham Aben Esra sur l’ecclésiaste. In 1711 Louis XIV. appointed Fourmont to assist a young Chinese, Hoan-ji, in compiling a Chinese grammar. Hoan-ji died in 1716, and it was not until 1737 that Fourmont publishedMeditationes Sinicaeand in 1742Grammatica Sinica. He also wroteRéflexions critiques sur les histoires des anciens peuples(1735), and several dissertations printed in theMémoiresof the Academy of Inscriptions. He became professor of Arabic in the Collège de France in 1715. In 1713 he was elected a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, in 1738 a member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1742 a member of that of Berlin. He died at Paris on the 19th of December 1745.
His brother, Michel Fourmont (1690-1746), was also a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and professor of the Syriac language in the Royal College, and was sent by the government to copy inscriptions in Greece.
An account of Étienne Fourmont’s life and a catalogue of his works will be found in the second edition (1747) of hisRéflexions critiques.
An account of Étienne Fourmont’s life and a catalogue of his works will be found in the second edition (1747) of hisRéflexions critiques.
FOURNET, JOSEPH JEAN BAPTISTE XAVIER(1801-1869), French geologist and metallurgist, was born at Strassburg on the 15th of May 1801. He was educated at the École des Mines at Paris, and after considerable experience as a mining engineer he was in 1834 appointed professor of geology at Lyons. He was a man of wide knowledge and extensive research, and wrote memoirs on chemical and mineralogical subjects, on eruptive rocks, on the structure of the Jura, the metamorphism of the Western Alps, on the formation of oolitic limestones, on kaolinization and on metalliferous veins. On metallurgical subjects also he was an acknowledged authority; and he published observations on the order of sulphurability of metals (loi de Fournet). He died at Lyons on the 8th of January 1869. His chief publications were:Études sur les dépôts métallifères(Paris, 1834);Histoire de la dolomie(Lyons, 1847);De l’extension des terrains houillers(1855);Géologie lyonnaise(Lyons, 1861).
FOURNIER, PIERRE SIMON(1712-1768), French engraver and typefounder, was born at Paris on the 15th of September 1712. He was the son of a printer, and was brought up to his father’s business. After studying drawing under the painterColson, he practised for some time the art of wood-engraving, and ultimately turned his attention to the engraving and casting of types. He designed many new characters, and his foundry became celebrated not only in France, but in foreign countries. Not content with his practical achievements, he sought to stimulate public interest in his art by the production of various works on the subject. In 1737 he published hisTable des proportions qu’il faut observer entre les caractères, which was followed by several other technical treatises. In 1758 he assailed the title of Gutenberg to the honour awarded him as inventor of printing, claiming it for Schöffer, in hisDissertation sur l’origine et les progrès de l’art de graver en bois. This gave rise to a controversy in which Schöpflin and Baer were his opponents. Fournier’s contributions to this debate were collected and reprinted under the title ofTraités historiques et critiques sur l’origine de l’imprimerie. His principal work, however, was theManuel typographique, which appeared in 2 vols. 8vo in 1764, the first volume treating of engraving and type-founding, the second of printing, with examples of different alphabets. It was the author’s design to complete the work in four volumes, but he did not live to execute it. He died at Paris on the 8th of October 1768.
FOURNIER L’HÉRITIER, CLAUDE(1745-1825), French revolutionist, called “l’Américain,” was born at Auzon (Haute-Loire) on the 21st of December 1745, the son of a poor weaver. He went to America to seek his fortune, and started at San Domingo an establishment for makingtafia(an inferior quality of rum), but lost his money in a fire. Returning to France he threw himself into the Revolution with enthusiasm, and specially distinguished himself by the active part he took in the organization of the popular armed force by means of which the most famous of the revolutionarycoupswere effected. His influence was principally manifested in the insurrections of the 5th and 6th of October 1789, the 17th of July 1791, and the 20th of June and the 10th of August 1792. He was on bad terms with the majority of the politicians, and particularly with Marat, and spent a great part of his time in prison, all the governments regarding him as an agitator and accusing him of inciting to insurrection. Arrested for the first time for trying to force an entrance into the club of the Cordeliers, from which he had been expelled, he was released, but was in prison from the 12th of December 1793 to the 21st of September 1794, and again from the 9th of March 1795 to the 26th of October 1795. After the attempt on the First Consul in the rue Sainte-Nicaise he was deported to Guiana, but was allowed to return to France in 1809. In 1811, while under surveillance at Auxerre, he was accused of having provoked anémeuteagainst taxes known as thedroits réunis(afterwards calledcontributions indirectes), and was imprisoned in the Château d’If, where he remained till 1814. On the second restoration of the Bourbons Fournier was confined for about nine months in the prison of La Force. After 1816 he was left unmolested, turned royalist, and passed his last years in importuning the Restoration government for compensation for his lost property in San Domingo. He died in obscurity.
For further details see preface to F.A. Aulard’s edition of Fournier’sMémoires secrets(Paris, 1890), published by the Société de l’histoire de la Révolution.
For further details see preface to F.A. Aulard’s edition of Fournier’sMémoires secrets(Paris, 1890), published by the Société de l’histoire de la Révolution.
FOURTOU, MARIE FRANÇOIS OSCAR BARDY DE(1836-1897), French politician, was born at Ribérac (Dordogne) on the 3rd of January 1836, and represented his native department in the National Assembly after the Franco-German War. There he proved a useful adherent to Thiers, who made him minister of public works in December 1872. He was minister of religion in the cabinet of May 18-24, 1873, being the only member of the Right included by Thiers in that short-lived ministry. As minister of education, religion and the fine arts in the reconstructed cabinet of the duc de Broglie he had used his administrative powers to further clerical ends, and as minister of the interior in Broglie’s cabinet in 1877 he resumed the administrative methods of the Second Empire. With a well-known Bonapartist, Baron R.C.F. Reille, as his secretary, he replaced republican functionaries by Bonapartist partisans, reserving a few places for the Legitimists. In the general elections of that year he used the whole weight of officialdom to secure a majority for the Right, to support a clerical and reactionary programme. He accompanied Marshal MacMahon in his tour through southern France, and the presidential manifesto of September, stating that the president would rely solely on the Senate should the elections prove unfavourable, was generally attributed to Fourtou. In spite of these efforts the cabinet fell, and a commission was appointed to inquire into their unconstitutional abuse of power. Fourtou was unseated in consequence of the revelations made in the report of the commission. In the Chamber of Deputies Gambetta gave the lie direct to Fourtou’s allegation that the republican party opposed every republican principle that was not antiquated. A duel was fought in consequence, but neither party was injured. He was re-elected to the chamber in 1879 and entered the Senate the next year. Failing to secure re-election to the Senate in 1885 he again entered the popular chamber as Legitimist candidate in 1889, but he took no further active part in politics. He died in Paris in 1897.
His works includeHistoire de Louis XVI(1840);Histoire de Saint Pie V(1845);Mme Swetchine, sa vie et ses œuvres(2 vols., 1859);La Question italienne(1860);De la contre-révolution(1876); andMémoires d’un royaliste(2 vols., 1888).
His works includeHistoire de Louis XVI(1840);Histoire de Saint Pie V(1845);Mme Swetchine, sa vie et ses œuvres(2 vols., 1859);La Question italienne(1860);De la contre-révolution(1876); andMémoires d’un royaliste(2 vols., 1888).
FOUSSA, orFossa, the native name ofCryptoprocta ferox, a somewhat cat-like or civet-like mammal peculiar to Madagascar, where it is the largest carnivorous animal. It is about twice the size of a cat (5 ft. from nose to end of tail), with short close fur of nearly uniform pale brown. Little is known of its habits, except that it is nocturnal, frequently attacks and carries off goats, and especially kids, and shows great ferocity when wounded, on which account it is much dreaded by the natives. An example lived in the London zoological gardens for nearly fourteen years. SeeCarnivora.
FOWEY(usually pronouncedFoy), a seaport and market-town in the Bodmin parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, on the Great Western railway, 25 m. by sea W. of Plymouth. Pop. (1901) 2258. It lies on the west shore of the picturesque estuary of the river Fowey, close to the water’s edge, and sheltered by a screen of hills. Its church of St Nicholas is said to have been built in the 14th century, on the site of a still older edifice dedicated to St Finbar of Cork. It has a fine tower and late Norman doorway. Within are a priest’s chamber over the porch, a handsome oak ceiling, a 15th-century pulpit, and some curious monuments and brasses. Place House, adjacent to the church, is a highly ornate Tudor building. A few ancient houses remain in the town. Deep-sea fishing is carried on; but the staple trade consists in the export of china clay and minerals, coal being imported. Fowey harbour, which is easy of access in clear weather, will admit large vessels at any state of the tide. St Catherine’s Fort, dating from the days of Henry VIII. and now ruined, stands at the harbour’s mouth, and once formed the main defence of the town. Opposite the town, and connected with it by Bodeneck Ferry, is the village of Polruan. Its main features are St Saviour’s Chapel, with an ancient rood-stone, and the remains of Hall House, which was garrisoned during the civil wars of the 17th century.
Fowey (Fawy, Vawy, Fowyk) held a leading position amongst Cornish ports from the reign of Edward I. to the days of the Tudors. The numerous references to the privateering exploits of its ships in the Patent and Close Rolls and the extraordinary number of them at the siege of Calais in 1346 alike testify to its importance. During this period the king’s mandates were addressed to the bailiffs or to the mayor and bailiffs, and no charter of incorporation appears to have been granted until the reign of James II. Under the second charter of 1690 the common council consisted of a mayor and eight aldermen and these with a recorder elected the free burgesses. A member for Fowey and Looe was summoned to a council at Westminster in 1340, but from that date until 1571, when it was entrusted with the privilege of returning two members, it had no parliamentary representation. By the Reform Act of 1832 it lost both itsmembers. It had ceased to exercise its municipal functions a few years previously. In 1316 the prior of Tywardreath, as lord of the manor, obtained the right to hold a Monday market and two fairs on the feasts of St Finbar and St Lucy, but by the charter of 1690 provision was made for a Saturday market and three fairs, on the 1st of May, 10th of September and Shrove Tuesday, and only these three continue to be held.
FOWL(Dan.Fugl, Ger.Vogel), a term originally used in the sense that bird1now is, but, except in composition,—as sea-fowl, wild-fowl and the like,—practically almost confined2at present to designate the otherwise nameless species which struts on our dunghills, gathers round our barn-doors, or stocks our poultry yards—the type of the genusGallusof ornithologists, of which four well-marked species are known. Thefirstof these is the red jungle-fowl of the greater part of India,G. ferrugineus,—called by many writersG. bankiva,—which is undoubtedly the parent stock of all the domestic races (cf. Darwin,Animals and Plants under Domestication, i. pp. 233-246). It inhabits northern India from Sind to Burma and Cochin China, as well as the Malay Peninsula and many of the islands as far as Timor, besides the Philippines. It occurs on the Himalayas up to the height of 4000 ft., and its southern limits in the west of India proper are, according to Jerdon, found on the Raj-peepla hills to the south of the Nerbudda, and in the east near the left bank of the Godavery, or perhaps even farther, as he had heard of its being killed at Cummum. This species resembles in plumage what is commonly known among poultry-fanciers as the “Black-breasted game” breed, and this is said to be especially the case with examples from the Malay countries, between which and examples from India some differences are observable—the latter having the plumage less red, the ear-lappets almost invariably white, and slate-coloured legs, while in the former the ear-lappets are crimson, like the comb and wattles, and the legs yellowish. If the Malayan birds be considered distinct, it is to them that the nameG. bankivaproperly applies. This species is said to be found in lofty forests and in dense thickets, as well as in ordinary bamboo-jungles, and when cultivated land is near its haunts, it may be seen in the fields after the crops are cut in straggling parties of from 10 to 20. The crow to which the cock gives utterance morning and evening is just like that of a bantam, never prolonged as in most domestic birds. The hen breeds from January to July, according to the locality; and lays from 8 to 12 creamy-white eggs, occasionally scraping together a few leaves or a little dry grass by way of a nest. The so-calledG. giganteus, formerly taken by some ornithologists for a distinct species, is now regarded as a tame breed ofG. ferrugineusorbankiva. Thesecondgood species is the grey jungle-fowl,G. sonnerati, whose range begins a little to the northward of the limits of the preceding, and it occupies the southern part of the Indian peninsula, without being found elsewhere. The cock has the end of the shaft of the neck-hackles dilated, forming a horny plate, like a drop of yellow sealing-wax. His call is very peculiar, being a broken and imperfect kind of crow, quite unlike that ofG. ferrugineusand more like a cackle. The two species where their respective ranges overlap, occasionally interbreed in a wild state, and the present readily crosses in confinement with domestic poultry, but the hybrids are nearly always sterile. Thethirdspecies is the Sinhalese jungle-fowl,G. stanleyi(theG. lafayettiiof some authors), peculiar to Ceylon. This also greatly resembles in plumage some domestic birds, but the cock is red beneath, and has a yellow comb with a red edge and purplish-red cheeks and wattles. He has also a singularly different voice, his crow being dissyllabic. This bird crosses readily with tame hens, but the hybrids are believed to be infertile. Thefourthspecies,G. varius(theG. furcatusof some authors), inhabits Java and the islands eastwards as far as Flores. This differs remarkably from the others in not possessing hackles, and in having a large unserrated comb of red and blue and only a single chin wattle. The predominance of green in its plumage is another easy mark of distinction. Hybrids between this species and domestic birds are often produced, but they are most commonly sterile. Some of them have been mistaken for distinct species, as those which have received the names ofG. aeneusandG. temmincki.
Several circumstances seem to render it likely that fowls were first domesticated in Burma or the countries adjacent thereto, and it is the tradition of the Chinese that they received their poultry from the West about the year 1400B.C.By the Institutes of Manu, the tame fowl is forbidden, though the wild is allowed to be eaten—showing that its domestication was accomplished when they were written. The bird is not mentioned in the Old Testament nor by Homer, though he hasἈλέκτωρ(cock) as the name of a man, nor is it figured on ancient Egyptian monuments. Pindar mentions it, and Aristophanes calls it the Persian bird, thus indicating it to have been introduced to Greece through Persia, and it is figured on Babylonian cylinders between the 6th and 7th centuriesB.C.It is sculptured on the Lycian marbles in the British Museum (c.600B.C.), and E. Blyth remarks (Ibis, 1867, p. 157) that it is there represented with the appearance of a true jungle-fowl, for none of the wildGallihave the upright bearing of the tame breed, but carry their tail in a drooping position. For further particulars of these breeds seePoultry.
(A. N.)
1Bird(cognate withbreedandbrood) was originally the young of any animal, and an early Act of the Scottish parliament speaks of “Wolf-birdis,”i.e.Wolf-cubs.2LikeDeer(Dan.Dyr, Ger.Tier).Beast, too, with some men has almost attained as much specialization.
1Bird(cognate withbreedandbrood) was originally the young of any animal, and an early Act of the Scottish parliament speaks of “Wolf-birdis,”i.e.Wolf-cubs.
2LikeDeer(Dan.Dyr, Ger.Tier).Beast, too, with some men has almost attained as much specialization.
FOWLER, CHARLES(1792-1867), English architect, was born at Cullompton, Devon, on the 17th of May 1792. After serving an apprenticeship of five years at Exeter, he went to London in 1814, and entered the office of David Laing, where he remained till he commenced practice for himself. His first work of importance was the court of bankruptcy in Basinghall Street, finished in 1821. In the following year he gained the first premium for a design for the new London bridge, which, however, was ultimately built according to the design of another architect. Fowler’s other designs for bridges include one constructed across the Dart at Totnes. He was also the architect for the markets of Covent Garden and Hungerford, the new market at Gravesend, and Exeter lower market, and besides several churches he designed Devon lunatic asylum (1845), the London fever hospital (1849), and the hall of the Wax Chandlers’ Company, Gresham Street (1853). For some years he was honorary secretary of the institute of British architects, and he was afterwards created vice-president. He retired from his profession in 1853, and died at Great Marlow, Bucks, on the 26th of September 1867.
FOWLER, EDWARD(1632-1714), English divine, was born in 1632 at Westerleigh, Gloucestershire, and was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, afterwards migrating to Trinity College, Cambridge. He was successively rector of Norhill, Bedfordshire (1656) and of All Hallows, Bread Street, London (1673), and in 1676 was elected a canon of Gloucester, his friend Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, resigning in his favour. In 1681 he became vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate, but after four years was suspended for Whiggism. When the Declaration of Indulgence was published in 1687 he successfully influenced the London clergy against reading it. In 1691 he was consecrated bishop of Gloucester and held the see until his death on the 26th of August 1714. Fowler was suspected of Pelagian tendencies, and his earliest book was aFree Discoursein defence ofThe Practices of Certain Moderate Divines called Latitudinarians(1670).The Design of Christianity, published by him in the following year, in which he laid stress on the moral design of revelation, was criticized by Baxter in hisHow far Holiness is the Design of Christianity(1671) and by Bunyan in hisDefence of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith(1672), the latter describing theDesignas “a mixture of Popery, Socinianism and Quakerism,” a horrid accusation to which Fowler replied in a scurrilous pamphlet entitledDirt Wip’d Off. He also published, in 1693,Twenty-Eight Propositions, by which the Doctrine of the Trinity is endeavoured to be explained, challenging with some success the Socinian position.
FOWLER, JOHN(1826-1864), English inventor, was born at Melksham, Wilts, on the 11th of July 1826. He learned practical engineering at Middlesborough-on-Tees, and about 1850 invented a mechanical system for the drainage of land. In 1852 he began experiments in steam cultivation, and in 1858 the Royal Agricultural Society awarded him the prize of £500 which it had offered for a steam-cultivator that should be an economic substitute for the plough or the spade. In 1860 he founded at Hunslet, Leeds, the firm of Fowler & Co., manufacturers of agricultural machinery, traction engines, &c. He died at Ackworth, Yorkshire, on the 4th of December 1864.
FOWLER, SIR JOHN(1817-1898), English civil engineer, was born on the 15th of July 1817 at Wadsley Hall, near Sheffield, where his father was a land-surveyor. At the age of sixteen he became a pupil of John Towlerton Leather, the engineer of the Sheffield water-works. The latter’s uncle, George Leather, was engineer of the Great Aire and Calder Navigation Company, of the Goole Docks, and other similar works, and Fowler passed occasionally into his employment, in which he acquired a thorough knowledge of hydraulic engineering. The era of railway construction soon swept both Fowler and his employers into its service, and one of his first employments was to oppose the route of the Midland railway, chosen by the Stephensons, which left Sheffield on a branch line, and was therefore strongly resented by the inhabitants. The prestige of the Stephensons carried all before it, but in later life Sir John Fowler had the satisfaction of seeing the opposition of his clients justified, and Sheffield placed on the main line. In 1838 he went into the office of John Urpeth Rastrick, one of the leading railway engineers of the day, where he was employed in designing bridges for the line from London to Brighton, and also in surveying for railways in Lancashire. In 1839 he went as representative of Mr Leather to take charge of the construction of the Stockton & Hartlepool railway and remained as manager of the line after it was finished. In 1844 he began his independent career as an engineer, and from the first was largely employed, more particularly in laying out the small railway systems which eventually were amalgamated under the title of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire. In the course of this work he designed a bridge known as Torksey Bridge, which was disallowed by the Board of Trade inspector, Captain (afterwards Field-Marshal Sir) Lintorn Simmons. The engineering profession espoused Fowler’s side in the controversy which followed, and as a result the verdict of the Board of Trade was modified. The episode was the beginning of a warm friendship between these distinguished representatives of civil and military engineering. Fowler was engineer of the London Metropolitan railway, the pioneer of underground railways, and noteworthy in that it was mostly made not by tunnelling, but by excavating from the surface and then covering in the permanent way; and he lived to be one of the engineers officially connected with the deep tunnelling “tube” system extensively adopted for electric railways in London. He was also engaged in the making of railways in Ireland, and in 1867 he was selected by Disraeli to serve on a commission to advise the government in respect of a proposal for a state-purchase of the Irish railway system. He also carried out considerable works in relation to the Nene Valley drainage and the reclamation of land at the Norfolk estuary.
In 1865 he was elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the youngest president who had ever sat in the chair. He was strongly opposed to the project of a Channel tunnel to France, and in 1872 he endeavoured to obtain the consent of parliament to a Channel ferry scheme, whereby trains were to be transported across the strait in large ferry steamers. The proposal involved the making of enlarged harbours at Dover and Audresselles on the French coast, and the bill, after passing the Commons, was thrown out by the casting vote of the chairman of a committee of the House of Lords. In 1875 he was enabled to render, in his private capacity, a signal service to the Italian government, which was much embarrassed by impracticable proposals pressed on it by Garibaldi for a rectification of the course of the Tiber and other engineering works. He had several interviews with the Italian patriot, and persuaded him of the impracticable nature of his plan, thereby obtaining for the government leisure to devise a more reasonable scheme. For eight years from 1871 he acted as general engineering adviser in Egypt to the Khedive Ismail. He projected a railway to the Sudan, and also the reparation of the barrage. These and many other plans came to an end owing to financial reasons. But the maps and surveys for the railway were given to the war office, and proved most useful to Lord Wolseley in his Nile expedition. For his service Fowler was made K.C.M.G. (1885). He was created a baronet in 1890 on the completion of the Forth bridge, of which with his partner Sir Benjamin Baker he was joint engineer. He died at Bournemouth on the 20th of November 1898.
FOWLER, WILLIAM(c.1560-1614), Scottish poet, was born about the year 1560. He attended St Leonard’s college, St Andrews, between 1574 and 1578, and in 1581 he was in Paris studying civil law. In 1581 he issued a pamphlet against John Hamilton and other Catholics, who had, he said, driven him from his country. He subsequently (about ?1590) became private secretary and Master of Requests to Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI., and was renominated to these offices when the queen went to England. In 1609 his services were rewarded by a grant of 2000 acres in Ulster. His sister Susannah Fowler married Sir John Drummond, and was mother of the poet William Drummond of Hawthornden. On the title-page ofThe Triumphs of Petrarke, Fowler styles himself “P. of Hawick,” which has been held to mean that he was parson of Hawick, but this is doubtful. A MS. collection of seventy-two sonnets, entitledThe Tarantula of Love, and a translation (1587) from the Italian of theTriumphs of Petrarkeare preserved in the library of the university of Edinburgh, in the collection bequeathed by his nephew, William Drummond. Two other volumes of his manuscript notes, scrolls of poems, &c., are preserved among the Drummond MSS., now in the library of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Specimens of Fowler’s verses were published in 1803 by John Leyden in hisScottish Descriptive Poems. Fowler contributed a prefatory sonnet to James VI.’sFuries; and James, in return, commended, in verse, Fowler’sTriumphs.
FOX, CHARLES JAMES(1749-1806), British statesman and orator, was the third son of Henry Fox, 1st Lord Holland, and his wife. Lady Caroline Lennox, eldest daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd duke of Richmond. He was born at 9 Conduit Street, Westminster, on the 24th of January 1749. The father, who treated his children with extreme indulgence, allowed him to choose his school, and he elected to go to one kept at Wandsworth by a French refugee, named Pampelonne. In a very short time he asked to be sent to Eton, where he went in 1757. At Eton he did no more work than was acceptable to him, but he had an inborn love of literature, and he laid the foundation of that knowledge of the classic languages which in after years was the delight of his life. The vehemence of his temper was controlled by an affectionate disposition. When quite a boy he checked his own tendency to fits of passion on learning that his father trusted him to cure his defects.
That he learnt anything, and that he grew up an amiable and magnanimous man, were solely due to his natural worth, for no one ever owed less to education or to family example. The relations of Lord Holland to his sons would be difficult to parallel. He not only treated them, and in particular Charles, as friends and companions in pleasure from the first, but he did his best to encourage them in dissipation. In 1763 he took Charles for a tour on the continent, introduced him to the most immoral society of the time and gave him money with which to gamble. The boy came back to Eton a precocious rake. It was his good fortune that he did go back, for he was subjected to a wholesome course of ridicule by the other boys, and was flogged by Dr Barnard, the headmaster. In 1764 Charles proceeded to Hertford College, Oxford. At Oxford, as at Eton, he read literature from natural liking, and he paid some attention to mathematics. His often quoted saying that he found mathematics entertaining was probably meant as a jest at the expenseof Sir G. Macartney, to whom he was writing, and who was known to maintain that it was useless. His own account of his school and college training, given in a letter to the same correspondent (6th August 1767), is: “I employed almost my whole time at Oxford in the mathematical and classical knowledge, but more particularly in the latter, so that I understand Latin and Greek tolerably well. I am totally ignorant in every part of useful knowledge. I am more convinced every day how little advantage there is in being what at school and the university is called a good scholar: one receives a good deal of amusement from it, but that is all. At present I read nothing but Italian, which I am immoderately fond of, particularly of the poetry.... As for French, I am far from being so thorough a master of it as I could wish, but I know so much of it that I could perfect myself in it at any time with very little trouble, especially if I pass three or four months in France.” The passage is characteristic. It shows at once his love of good literature and his thoroughness. Fox’s youth was disorderly, but it was never indolent. He was incapable of half doing anything which he did at all. He did perfect himself in French, and he showed no less determination to master mere sports. At a later period when he had grown fat he accounted for his skill in taking “cut balls” at tennis by saying that he was a very “painstaking man.” He was all his life a great and steady walker.
The disorders of his early years were notorious, and were a common subject of gossip. In the spring of 1767 he left Oxford and joined his father on the continent during a tour in France and Italy. In 1768 Lord Holland bought the pocket borough of Midhurst for him, and he entered on his parliamentary career, and on London society, in 1769. Within the next few years Lord Holland reaped to the full the reward for all that was good, and whatever was evil, in the training he had given his son. The affection of Charles Fox for his father was unbounded, but the passion for gambling which had been instilled in him as a boy proved the ruin of the family fortune. He kept racehorses, and bet on them largely. On the racecourse he was successful, and it is another proof of his native thoroughness that he gained a reputation as a handicapper. It is said that he won more than he lost on the course. At the gambling table he was unfortunate, and there can be little question that he was fleeced both in London and in Paris by unscrupulous players of his own social rank, who took advantage of his generosity and whose worthlessness he knew. In the ardour of his passion Fox took his losses and their consequences with an attractive gaiety. He called the room in which he did business with the Jew moneylenders his “Jerusalem chamber.” When his elder brother had a son, and his prospects were injured, he said that the boy was a second Messiah, who had appeared for the destruction of the Jews. “He had his jest, and they had his estate.” In 1774 Lord Holland had to find £140,000 to pay the gambling debts of his sons. For years Charles lived in pecuniary embarrassment, and during his later years, when he had given up gambling, he was supported by the contributions of wealthy friends, who in 1793 formed a fund of £70,000 for his benefit.
His public career did not supply him with a check on habits of dissipation in the shape of the responsibilities of office. He began, as was to be expected in his father’s son, by supporting the court; and in 1770, when only twenty-one, he was appointed a junior lord of the admiralty with Lord North. During the violent conflict over the Middlesex election (seeWilkes, John) he took the unpopular side, and vehemently asserted the right of the House of Commons to exclude Wilkes. In 1772 during the proceedings against Crosby and Oliver—a part of the “Wilkes and liberty” agitation—he and Lord North were attacked by a mob and rolled in the mud. But Fox’s character was incompatible with ministerial service under King George III. The king, himself a man of orderly life, detested him as a gambler and a rake. And Fox was too independent to please a master who expected obedience. In February 1772 he threw up his place to be free to oppose the Royal Marriage Act, on which the king’s heart was set. He returned to office as junior lord of the treasury in December. But he was insubordinate; his sympathy with the American colonies, which were now beginning to resist the claims of the mother country to tax them, made him intolerable to the king and he was dismissed in February 1774. The death of his father on the 1st of July of that year removed an influence which tended to keep him subordinate to the court, and his friendship for Burke drew him into close alliance with the Rockingham Whigs. From the first his ability had won him admiration in the House of Commons. He had prepared to distinguish himself as an orator by the elaborate cultivation of his voice, which was naturally harsh and shrill. His argumentative force was recognized at once, but the full scope of his powers was first shown on the 2nd of February 1775, when he spoke on the disputes with the colonies. The speech is unfortunately lost, but Gibbon, who heard it, told his friend Holroyd (afterwards Earl of Sheffield) that Fox, “taking the vast compass of the question before us, discovered powers for regular debate which neither his friends hoped nor his enemies dreaded.”
His great political career dates from that day. It is unique among the careers of British statesmen of the first rank, for it was passed almost wholly in opposition. Except for a few months in 1782 and 1783, and again for a few months before his death in 1806, he was out of office. If he was absolutely sincere in the statement he made to his friend Fitzpatrick, in a letter of the 3rd of February 1778, his life was all he could have wished. “I am,” he wrote, “certainly ambitious by nature, but I really have, or think I have, totally subdued that passion. I have still as much vanity as ever, which is a happier passion by far, because great reputation I think I may acquire and keep, great situation I never can acquire, nor if acquired keep, without making sacrifices that I never will make.” His words show that he judged himself and read the future accurately. Yet it was certainly a cause of bitter disappointment to him that he had to stand by while the country was in his opinion not only misgoverned, but led to ruin. His reputation as an orator and a political critic, which was great from the first and grew as he lived, most assuredly did not console him for his impotence as a statesman. Of the causes which rendered his brilliant capacity useless for the purpose of obtaining practical success the most important, perhaps the only one of real importance, was his personal character. Lord John Russell (afterwards Earl Russell), his friendly biographer, has to confess that Fox might have joined in the confession of Mirabeau: “The public cause suffers for the immoralities of my youth.” His reputation as a rake and gambler was so well established at the very beginning of his career that when he was dismissed from office in 1774 there was a general belief among the vulgar that he had been detected in actual theft. His perfect openness, the notoriety of his bankruptcies and of the seizure of his books and furniture in execution, kept him before the world as a model of dissipation. In 1776, when he was leading the resistance to Lord North’s colonial policy, he “neither abandoned gaming nor his rakish life. He was seldom in bed before five in the morning nor out of it before two at noon.” At the most important crisis of his life in 1783, he almost made an ostentation of disorder and of indifference not only to appearances, but even to decency. Horace Walpole has drawn a picture of him at that time which Lord Holland, Fox’s beloved and admiring nephew, speaking from his early recollections of his uncle, confesses has “some justification.” Coming from such an authority the certificate may be held to confirm the substantial accuracy of Walpole. “Fox lodged in St James’s Street, and as soon as he rose, which was very late, had a levée of his followers and of the gaming club at Brooks’s—all his disciples. His bristly black person, and shagged breast quite open and rarely purified by any ablutions, was wrapped in a foul linen nightgown and his bushy hair dishevelled. In these cynic weeds and with Epicurean good humour did he dictate his politics, and in this school did the heir of the empire attend his lessons and imbibe them.” That this cynic manner, and Epicurean speech, were only the outside of a manly and generous nature was well known to the personal friends of Fox, and is now universally allowed. But by the bulk of his contemporaries,who could not fail to see the weaknesses he ostentatiously displayed, Fox was, not unnaturally, suspected as being immoral and untrustworthy. Therefore when he came into collision with the will of the king he failed to secure the confidence of the nation which was his only support. Nor ought any critical admirer of Fox to deny that George III. was not wholly wrong when he said that the great orator “was totally destitute of discretion and sound judgment.” Fox made many mistakes, due in some cases to vehemence of temperament, and in others only to be ascribed to want of sagacity. That he fought unpopular causes is a very insufficient explanation of his failure as a practical statesman. He could have profited by the reaction which followed popular excitement but for his bad reputation and his want of discretion.
During the eight years between his expulsion from office in 1774 and the fall of Lord North’s ministry in March 1782 he may indeed be said to have done one very great thing in politics. He planted the seed of the modern Liberal party as opposed to the pure Whigs. In political allegiance he became a member of the Rockingham party and worked in alliance with the marquis and with Burke, whose influence on him was great. In opposing the attempt to coerce the American colonists, and in assailing the waste and corruption of Lord North’s administration, as well as the undue influence of the crown, he was at one with the Rockingham Whigs. During the agitation against corruption, and in favour of honest management of the public money, which was very strong between 1779 and 1782, he and they worked heartily together. It had a considerable effect, and prepared the way for the reforms begun by Burke and continued by Pitt. But if Fox learnt much from Burke he learnt with originality. He declined to accept the revolution settlement as final, or to think with Burke that the constitution of the House of Commons could not be bettered. Fox acquired the conviction that, if the House was to be made an efficient instrument for restraining the interference of the king and for securing good government, it must cease to be filled to a very large extent by the nominees of boroughmongers and the treasury. He became a strong advocate for parliamentary reform. In all ways he was the ardent advocate of what have in later times been known as “Liberal causes,” the removal of all religious disabilities and tests, the suppression of private interests which hampered the public good, the abolition of the slave trade, and the emancipation of all classes and races of men from the strict control of authority.
A detailed account of his activity from 1774 to 1782 would entail the mention of every crisis of the American War of Independence and of every serious debate in parliament. Throughout the struggle Fox was uniformly opposed to the coercion of the colonies and was the untiring critic of Lord North. While the result must be held to prove that he was right, he prepared future difficulties for himself by the fury of his language. He was the last man in the world to act on the worldly-wise maxim that an enemy should always be treated as if he may one day be a friend, and a friend as if he might become an enemy. On the 29th of November 1779 Fox was wounded in a duel with Mr William Adam, a supporter of Lord North’s whom he had savagely denounced. He assailed Lord North with unmeasured invective, directed not only at his policy but at his personal character, though he well knew that the prime minister was an amiable though pliable man, who remained in office against his own wish, in deference to the king who appealed to his loyalty. When the disasters of the American war had at last made a change of ministry necessary, and the king applied to the Whigs, through the intermediary of Lord Shelburne, Fox made a very serious mistake in persuading the marquess of Rockingham not to insist on dealing directly with the sovereign. The result was the formation of a cabinet belonging, in Fox’s own words, partly to the king and partly to the country—that is to say, partly of Whigs who wished to restrain the king, and partly of the king’s friends, represented by Lord Shelburne, whose real function was to baffle the Whigs. Dissensions began from the first, and were peculiarly acute between Shelburne and Fox, the two secretaries of state. The old division of duties by which the southern secretary had the correspondence with the colonies and the western powers of Europe, and the northern secretary with the others, had been abolished on the formation of the Rockingham cabinet. All foreign affairs were entrusted to Fox. Lord Shelburne meddled in the negotiations for the peace at Paris. He also persuaded his colleagues to grant some rather scandalous pensions, and Fox’s acquiescence in this abuse after his recent agitation against Lord North’s waste did him injury. When the marquess of Rockingham died on the 1st of July 1782, and the king offered the premiership to Shelburne, Fox resigned, and was followed by a part of the Rockingham Whigs.
In refusing to serve under Shelburne he was undoubtedly consistent, but his next step was ruinous to himself and his party. On the 14th of February 1783 he formed a coalition with Lord North, based as they declared on “mutual goodwill and confidence.” Plausible excuses were made for the alliance, but to the country at large this union, formed with a man whom he had denounced for years, had the appearance of an unscrupulous conspiracy to obtain office on any terms. In the House of Commons the coalition was strong enough to drive Shelburne from office on the 24th of February. The king made a prolonged resistance to the pressure put on him to accept Fox and North as his ministers (seePitt, William). On the 2nd of April he was constrained to submit to the formation of a new ministry, in which the duke of Portland was prime minister and Fox and North were secretaries of state. The new administration was ill liked by some of the followers of both. Fox increased its unpopularity both in the House and in the country by consenting against the wish of most of his colleagues to ask for the grant of a sum of £100,000 a year to the prince of Wales. The act had the appearance of a deliberate offence to the king, who was on bad terms with his son. The magnitude of the sum, and his acquiescence in the grant of pensions by the Shelburne ministry, convinced the country that his zeal for economy was hypocritical. The introduction of the India Bill in November 1783 alarmed many vested interests, and offended the king by the provision which gave the patronage of India to a commission to be named by the ministry and removable only by parliament. The coalition, and Fox in particular, were assailed in a torrent of most telling invective and caricature. Encouraged by the growing unpopularity of his ministers, George III. gave it to be understood that he would not look upon any member of the House of Lords who voted for the India Bill as his friend. The bill was thrown out in the upper House on the 17th of December, and next day the king dismissed his ministers.
Fox now went into opposition again. The remainder of his life may be divided into four portions—his opposition to Pitt during the session of 1784; his parliamentary activity till his secession in 1797; his retirement till 1800; his return to activity and his short tenure of office before his death in 1806. During the first of these periods he deepened his unpopularity by assailing the undoubted prerogatives of the crown, by claiming for the House of Commons the right to override not only the king and the Lords but the opinion of the country, and by resisting a dissolution. This last pretension came very ill from a statesman who in 1780 had advocated yearly elections. He lost ground daily before the steady good judgment and unblemished character of Pitt. When parliament was dissolved at the end of the session of 1784, the country showed its sentiments by unseating 180 of the followers of Fox and North. Immense harm was done to both by the publication of a book calledThe Beauties of Fox, North and Burke, a compilation of their abuse of one another in recent years.
Fox himself was elected for Westminster with fewer votes than Admiral Lord Hood, but with a majority over the ministerial candidate, Sir Cecil Wray. The election was marked by an amazing outflow of caricatures and squibs, by weeks of rioting in which Lord Hood’s sailors fought pitched battles in St James’s Street with Fox’s hackney coachmen, and by the intrepid canvassing of Whig ladies. The beautiful duchess of Devonshire(Georgiana Spencer) is said to have won at least one vote for Fox by kissing a shoemaker who had a romantic idea of what constituted a desirable bribe. The high bailiff refused to make a return, and the confirmation of Fox’s election was delayed by the somewhat mean action of the ministry. He had, however, been chosen for Kirkwall, and could fight his cause in the House. In the end he recovered damages from the high bailiff. In his place in parliament he sometimes supported Pitt and sometimes opposed him with effect. His criticism on the ministers’ bill for the government of India was sound in principle, though the evils he foresaw did not arise. Little excuse can be made for his opposition to Pitt’s commercial policy towards Ireland. But as Fox on this occasion aided the vested interests of some English manufacturers he secured a certain revival of popularity. His support of Pitt’s Reform Bill was qualified by a just dislike of the ministers’ proposal to treat the possession of the franchise by a constituency as a property and not as a trust. His unsuccessful opposition to the commercial treaty with France in 1787 was unwise and most injurious to himself. He committed himself to the proposition that France was the natural enemy of Great Britain, a saying often quoted against him in coming years. It has been excused on the ground that when he said France he meant the aggressive house of Bourbon. A statesman whose words have to be interpreted by an esoteric meaning cannot fairly complain if he is often misunderstood. In 1788 he travelled in Italy, but returned in haste on hearing of the illness of the king. Fox supported the claim of the prince of Wales to the regency as a right, a doctrine which provoked Pitt into declaring that he would “unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his life.” The friendship between him and the prince of Wales (seeGeorge IV.) was always injurious to Fox. In 1787 he was misled by the prince’s ambiguous assurances into denying the marriage with Mrs Fitzherbert. On discovering that he had been deceived he broke off all relations with the prince for a year, but their alliance was renewed. During these years he was always in favour of whatever measures could be described as favourable to emancipation and to humanity. He actively promoted the impeachment of Warren Hastings, which had the support of Pitt. He was always in favour of the abolition of the slave trade (which he actually effected during his short tenure of office in 1806), of the repeal of the Test Acts, and of concessions to the Roman Catholics, both in Great Britain and in Ireland.
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.