33 Facts About Charles James Fox

1. Charles James Fox never can exceed what he does this day.

2. Charles James Fox is 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.

3. Charles James Fox is remembered in his home town of Chertsey by a bust on a high plinth, erected in 2006 in a new development by the railway station.

4. Charles James Fox's would survive him by some thirty-six years, dying on 8 July 1842, at the age of ninety-one.

5. Charles James Fox would increasingly spend time away from Parliament at Armistead's rural villa, St Ann's Hill, near Chertsey in Surrey, where Armistead's influence gradually moderated Fox's wilder behaviour and together they would read, garden, explore the countryside and entertain friends.

6. Charles James Fox married her in a private ceremony at Wyton in Huntingdonshire on 28 September 1795, but did not make the fact public until October 1802, and Elizabeth was never really accepted at court.

7. Charles James Fox was twice bankrupted between 1781 and 1784, and at one point his creditors confiscated his furniture.

8. Charles James Fox was an infamous gambler, once claiming that winning was the greatest pleasure in the world, and losing the second greatest.

9. Charles James Fox left £10,000-worth of debts, though this was only a quarter of the £40,000 that the charitable public had to raise to pay off Pitt's arrears.

10. Charles James Fox died—still in office—at Chiswick House, west of London, on 13 September 1806, not eight months after the younger Pitt.

11. On 10 June 1806, Charles James Fox offered a resolution for total abolition to Parliament: "this House, conceiving the African slave trade to be contrary to the principles of justice, humanity, and sound policy, will, with all practicable expedition, proceed to take effectual measures for abolishing the said trade.

12. Charles James Fox was appalled at what he called this "extraordinary step".

13. Charles James Fox was convinced that France desired a lasting peace and that he was "sure that two civil sentences from the Ministers would ensure Peace".

14. Charles James Fox confessed in December 1802 that he was "obstinate" in his belief that Napoleon's "wish is Peace, nay that he is afraid of war to the last degree".

15. Charles James Fox thought the coup d'etat of 1799 that brought Napoleon to power "a very bad beginning.

16. Charles James Fox believed that it was "impossible to support the Revolution [of 1688] and the Brunswick Succession upon any other principle" than the sovereignty of the people.

17. Charles James Fox could not believe that they "would disgrace" themselves in such a way.

18. Charles James Fox continued to defend the French Revolution, even as its fruits began to collapse into war, repression and the Reign of Terror.

19. Charles James Fox contributed to the peaceful resolution of these entanglements, and gained a new admirer in Catherine the Great, who bought a bust of Fox and placed it between Cicero and Demosthenes in her collection.

20. Charles James Fox read the book and found it "in very bad taste" and "favouring Tory principles", but avoided pressing the matter for a while to preserve his relationship with Burke.

21. Charles James Fox welcomed the French Revolution of 1789, interpreting it as a late Continental imitation of Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688.

22. Charles James Fox had declared that Pitt was "a rascal" and Fox "his Friend".

23. Charles James Fox was reputed to be the anonymous author of An Essay Upon Wind; with Curious Anecdotes of Eminent Peteurs.

24. Charles James Fox supported Pitt's reforms, despite apparent political expediency, but they were defeated by 248 to 174.

25. Charles James Fox proposed an East India Bill to place the government of the ailing and oppressive British East India Company, at that time in control of a considerable expanse of India, on a sounder footing with a board of governors responsible to Parliament and more resistant to Crown patronage.

26. Charles James Fox now found himself in common opposition to Shelburne with his old and bitter enemy, Lord North.

27. Charles James Fox became convinced that the King was determined to challenge the authority of Parliament and the balance of the constitution established in 1688, and to achieve Continental-style tyranny.

28. Charles James Fox drifted from his rather unideological family-oriented politics into the orbit of the Rockingham Whig party.

29. Charles James Fox went on several further expeditions to Europe, becoming well known in the great Parisian salons, meeting influential figures such as Voltaire, Edward Gibbon, the duc d'Orleans and the marquis de Lafayette, and becoming the co-owner of a number of racehorses with the duc de Lauzun.

30. On this trip, Charles James Fox was given a substantial amount of money with which to learn to gamble by his father, who arranged for him to lose his virginity, aged fourteen, to a Madame de Quallens.

31. Charles James Fox had amassed a considerable fortune by exploiting his position as Paymaster General of the forces.

32. Charles James Fox was born at 9 Conduit Street, London, the second surviving son of Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland, and Lady Caroline Lennox, a daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond.

33. Charles James Fox, styled The Honourable from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who was the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger.