thumb|[[Canting arms of Fox, Baron Holland: Ermine, on a chevron azure three fox's heads and necks erased or on a canton of the second a fleur-de-lys of the third]]
Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled The Honourable from 1762, was a British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the arch-rival of the Tory politician William Pitt the Younger; his father Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland, a leading Whig of his day, had similarly been the great rival of Pitt's famous father, William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham ("Pitt the Elder").
Fox rose to prominence in the House of Commons as a forceful and eloquent speaker with a notorious and colourful private life, though at that time with rather conservative and conventional opinions. However, with the coming of the American War of Independence and the influence of the Whig Edmund Burke, Fox's opinions evolved into some of the most radical to be aired in the British Parliament of his era.
Fox became a prominent and staunch opponent of King George III, whom he regarded as an aspiring tyrant. He supported the American Patriots and even dressed in the colours of George Washington's army. Briefly serving as Britain's first Foreign Secretary during the ministry of the Marquess of Rockingham in 1782, he returned to the post in a coalition government with his old enemy, Lord North, in 1783. However, the King forced Fox and North out of government before the end of the year and replaced them with the 24-year-old Pitt the Younger. Fox spent the following 22 years facing Pitt and the government from the opposition benches of the House of Commons.
Though Fox had little interest in the actual exercise of power and spent almost the entirety of his political career in opposition, he became noted as an anti-slavery campaigner, a supporter of the French Revolution and a leading parliamentary advocate of religious tolerance and individual liberty. His friendship with his mentor, Burke, and his parliamentary credibility were both casualties of Fox's support for France during the French Revolutionary Wars, but Fox went on to attack Pitt's wartime legislation and to defend the liberty of religious minorities and political radicals. After Pitt's death in January 1806, Fox served briefly as Foreign Secretary in the 'Ministry of All the Talents' of William Grenville before he died on 13 September 1806, aged 57.
Early life: 1749–1758
Fox was born in London on 24 January 1749, the second surviving son of Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland, and Lady Caroline Lennox, a daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond. Henry Fox (1705–1774) was an ally of Robert Walpole and rival of Pitt the Elder, and had amassed a considerable fortune by exploiting his position as Paymaster General of the Forces. Charles James Fox's elder brother Stephen (1745–1774) became the 2nd Baron Holland, and his younger brother Henry (1755–1811) had a distinguished military career.
Fox was the darling of his father, who found Charles "infinitely engaging & clever & pretty" and, from the time that his son was three years old, apparently preferred his company at meals to that of anyone else. The stories of Charles's over-indulgence by his doting father are legendary. It was said that Charles once expressed a great desire to break his father's watch and was not restrained or punished when he duly smashed it on the floor. On another occasion, when Henry had promised his son that he could watch the demolition of a wall on his estate and found that it had already been destroyed, he ordered the workmen to rebuild the wall and demolish it again, with Charles watching.
thumb|Mezzotint, Ladies Sarah Lennox and Susan Strangeways, with Charles James Fox (1762) at Holland House; after the original by Sir [[Joshua Reynolds, British Museum. Fox stands beside his first cousin Lady Susan Fox-Strangways (1743–1827), who holds a pigeon, while his aunt Lady Sarah Lennox (1745–1826) (his mother's youngest sister) leans out of a window above. In 1760, whilst at Eton College, Fox had developed a schoolboy crush on Susan and composed a prize-winning Latin verse describing a pigeon he found to deliver his love-letters to her "to please both Venus its mistress and him".]]
Given carte blanche to choose his own education, Fox in 1758 attended a fashionable Wandsworth school run by a Monsieur Pampellonne, followed by Eton College, where he began to develop his lifelong love of classical literature. In later life he was said to have always carried a copy of Horace in his coat pocket. He was taken out of school by his father in 1761 to attend the coronation of George III, who would become one of his most bitter enemies, and once more in 1763 to travel to the Continent (where he visited Paris and Spa). On this trip Charles was given a substantial amount of money with which to learn to gamble by his father, who also arranged for him to lose his virginity, aged fourteen, to a Madame de Quallens. Charles Fox was once known as a macaroni, a fashionable fellow, despite him being too overweight to look decent in his tight clothing. These three pursuits – gambling, womanising and the love of things and fashions foreign – would become, once inculcated in his adolescence, notorious habits of Fox's later life.
Fox entered Hertford College, Oxford, in October 1764. His tutor there was William Newcome. By the standards of aristocratic students, he worked hard while at Oxford, especially at mathematics. However, he was rather contemptuous of Oxford's "nonsenses". He left without graduating in spring 1766, to tour Europe with his family. Consequently, both Fox and his brother Stephen were insulted and pelted with mud in the street by the pro-Wilkes London crowds.
Between 1770 and 1774, Fox's seemingly promising career in the political establishment was spoiled. He was appointed to the Board of Admiralty by Lord North in February 1770, but on the 15th of the same month, he resigned due to his enthusiastic opposition to the government's Royal Marriages Act, the provisions of which – incidentally – cast doubt on the legitimacy of his parents' marriage. George III, also observing Fox's licentious private behaviour, took it to be presumption and judged that Fox could not be trusted to take anything seriously. Even after the Battle of Long Island in 1776, Fox stated that
On 31 October the same year, Fox responded to the King's address to Parliament with "one of his finest and most animated orations, and with severity to the answered person", so much so that, when he sat down, no member of the Government would attempt to reply.
Fox shared a mutual antipathy with George III that profoundly shaped Fox's political career. George III was among the most enthusiastic prosecutors of the American Revolutionary War. Fox became convinced, that George III was determined to challenge the authority of Parliament and the balance of the constitution established in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to achieve a continental-style tyranny. George III in return thought that Fox had "cast off every principle of common honour and honesty ... [a man who is] as contemptible as he is odious ... [and has an] aversion to all restraints." On 6 April 1780 John Dunning, 1st Baron Ashburton introduced a motion, asking that "The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished". It was passed by the Commons in a vote of 233 to 215. Fox thought that the motion is "glorious", saying on 24 April that: