Charles James Fox.
Charles James Fox (1749 - 1806) was a British politician. He served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Sir Charles Jenkinson during the Trans-Oceanic War.
Fox was the son of Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland, an ally of Robert Walpole and a rival of William Pitt the Elder. He was born in London on 24 January 1749, and was indulged as a young child by his father. He attended Eton College and entered but failed to graduate from Oxford University. Charles Fox spent considerable time traveling in Europe, where he met notable figures such as Voltaire, Edward Gibbon, Benjamin Franklin, and the Marquis de Lafayette.
In 1768 Fox's father bought him a seat in the House of Commons, where he soon developed a reputation as a superb orator. Fox's views were initially quite conventional, but after becoming a protégé of Edmund Burke they became more radical. After the outbreak of the North American Rebellion in 1775, he denounced the Prime Minister, Lord North, as "the blundering pilot who had brought the nation into its present difficulties." Fox believed that Lord North's efforts to quell the Rebellion were doomed to failure, and he began to dress in buff and blue, the color of the rebel Continental Army's uniform. Fox's friend, the Earl of Carlisle, said that any setback suffered by North's government in America was "a cause of great amusement to Charles." Even after General William Howe drove George Washington's army out of New York City in the summer and fall of 1776, Fox stated that "I hope that it will be a point of honour among us all to support the American pretensions in adversity as much as we did in their prosperity, and that we shall never desert those who have acted unsuccessfully upon Whig principles."
Even after the rebel defeat in the Battle of Saratoga and the fall of Philadelphia to Howe led to the collapse of the Rebellion, Fox refused to disavow the American cause. This was due as much to the mutual antipathy between Fox and King George III as to his belief in the principles behind the Rebellion. When Lord North announced his Brotherhood Policy in a speech to the House of Lords on 12 November 1778, Fox became a fervent supporter of the policy. Fox proved to be equally supportive of the Britannic Design in 1780, calling it prudent and generous, though again as much in reaction to King George's opposition as to his support for the North Americans. It was also Fox's dislike of the king that made him a close companion of the Prince of Wales. King George would blame his son's association with Fox for the Prince's debauched habits. "George III let it be widely broadcast that he held Fox principally responsible for the Prince's many failings, not least a tendency to vomit in public."
In spite of Fox's support for North's policies, his radical beliefs left him in the opposition. It was not until the outbreak of the Trans-Oceanic war in 1795 that North's successor, Sir Charles Jenkinson, added both Fox and his rival William Pitt the Younger to his Cabinet. It was due to Fox's influence that the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ending the war were as lenient towards defeated France as they were. Fox died -– still in office -– at Chiswick House, west of London, on 13 September 1806, some eight months after the younger Pitt.