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Charles James Fox as Historian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. R. Dinwiddy
J. R. Dinwiddy
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway College, University of London
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Extract

Several British statesmen have also been historians: Clarendon, Russell, Rosebery, Churchill—and Charles James Fox, although he produced only one volume. His History of the early part of the Reign of James II is a fragment of what might have been a much larger work; it was published posthumously, with a preface by his nephew Lord Holland, in 1808. Although it was given a mixed reception by the critics, it was regarded for several decades as something of a classic. It was translated into French, German, and Dutch; and was republished several times in England during the nineteenth century (most recently as a threepenny paperback in Cassell's National Library in 1888).

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1969 , pp. 23 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 Firth, C.H., ‘The Development of the Study of Seventeenth-century History’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd series, VII (1913), p. 40Google Scholar, and A Commentary on Macaulay's History of England (London, 1938), pp. 56–7;Google ScholarPeardon, T.P., The Transition in English Historical Writing 1760–1830 (New York, 1933), pp. 195–6.Google Scholar

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5 This is mostly to be found in the C. J. Fox and Holland House Papers, British Museum Additional Manuscripts (hereafter referred to as Add. MSS.) 47578 and 51510. The latter bundle is unfoliated. For the original manuscript of the History, see Add. MSS. 51508–9.

6 On Fox's other publications, see Lord Holland's introduction to Fox, C.J., A History of the early part of the Reign of James the Second (London, 1808—cited hereafter as History), p. xiv n.Google Scholar

7 Aikin's Annual Review and History of Literature (1808), p. 101.

8 He admitted that neither Cato nor Brutus would have approved of it—see Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, ed. Russell, Lord John (4 vols. London, 1853–1857—cited hereafter as Memorials), III, 278.Google Scholar

9 He seems at one stage to have aimed to cover also the reigns of William III and Anne (see an undated letter to the Hon. George Walpole, Add. MSS. 47578, fo. 85); but in January 1804 he told Holland that he did not intend to go beyond the Revolution (Memorials, in, 241).

10 Trotter, J.B., Memoirs of the latter years of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox (London, 1811), p. xvi.Google Scholar

11 See Hume's History of England (8 vols. London, 1782), VIII, 323.Google Scholar

12 Add. MSS. 47578, fos. 9–10. Cf. Holland to Fox, 10 September 1800 (Add. MSS. 47574, fos. 115–16): ‘the tendency of Hume's History …has certainly led many many people in England to consider their History which ought to be as it were a magazine of proofs and examples against Toryism as the strongest justification for High Church doctrines or at least the strongest satire against the contrary principles’.

13 Dalrymple, Sir John, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland (a vols. London and Edinburgh, 1771–1773);Google ScholarMacpherson, James, The History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover (2 vols. London, 1775).Google Scholar

14 Derry, J.W., The Regency Crisis and the Whigs, 1788–9 (Cambridge, 1963), p. 29.Google Scholar

15 Forty volumes of historical materials collected by Sir James Mackintosh are preserved in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 34487–526).

16 History, p. xvi.

17 There are articles on Laing and Belsham in the Dictionary of National Biography. For Heywood see Woolrych, H.W., Lives of Eminent Serjeants-at-Law (London, 1869), pp. 701–33.Google Scholar

18 Add. MSS. 47578, fos. 12–13 and 23.

19 Add. MSS. 51510.

20 Add. MSS. 47578, fos. 30 and 42.

21 History, pp. xxiv–xxxii. The original Memoirs of James II in his own hand-writing covering the years 1652–60 were burnt at St Omer during the French Revolution; but a French version of these Memoirs has recently been discovered and published in an English translation—see Sells, A. Lytton, Memoirs of James II (London, 1962).Google Scholar Of the Life of James II, compiled by William Dicconson with the aid of James's papers, there appear to have been two copies extant in the early nineteenth century. One of these was tracked down by Fox and his agents; it was in the possession of Alexander Cameron, Roman Catholic bishop at Edinburgh, and Laing examined it and described it to Fox. The other copy, which had been in the hands of the English Benedictines at Rome, was acquired by the Prince Regent, and an edition by J. S. Clarke was published on his orders in 1816. For Fox's correspondence relating to the papers, Memoirs and Life of James II, see Add. MSS. 47578, fos. 49–52, 58–60, 66–8, 71, 76–7, 80 and 109.

22 Op. cit. p. 339. See also St John to Holland, 21 April 1808, Add. MSS. 51824.

23 28 When Fox's historical fragment was published, Holland subjoined to it an appendix of documents consisting mainly of the Barillon correspondence between December 1684 and December 1685. The letters of subsequent years which Fox and his friends had transcribed were not published, as being irrelevant to the short period covered by Fox's work; but these copies were later used by Mackintosh and Macaulay.

24 Memorials, in, 219; History, p. xxxv n.

25 Add. MSS. 47578, fo. 46.

26 Memorials, m, 232.

27 Lauderdale to Fox, dated ‘Sunday’, Add. MSS. 51510; Fox to Lauderdale, 2 May 1800, Memorials, m, 301.

28 Ibid. in, 311. Cf. Fox to Wakefield, 26 January 1801, ibid. iv, 401.

29 Ibid. iv, 13 and 65; Add. MSS. 47578, fo. 64.

30 Miller, determined to outbid Longman, actually offered 4,525 guineas; but as Longman declined to raise his bid from the 4,000-guinea level, Holland agreed to accept £4,500. On the publication of Fox's History, see Add. MSS. 47578, fos. 89–103 and 123–4, and Dibdin, T.F., Bibliographical Decameron (3 vols. London, 1817), III, 442.Google Scholar

31 Dictionary of National Biography, XVI, 1313.

32 History, pp. 19–20.

33 Ibid. pp. 20–2 and 36.

34 Ibid. pp. 48–50. Cf. Voltaire: ‘Le jugement de la postérité est le seul rempart qu'on ait contre la tyrannie heureuse’ Essai sur les Mæurs, ch. CLXVI; quoted by Black, J.B., The Art of History (London, 1926), p. 32 n.Google Scholar

35 History, pp. 62–4.

36 Ibid. pp. 101–3.

37 Bolingbroke, , Works (5 vols. London, 1754), II, 102–3.Google Scholar

38 History, pp. 155–6.

39 Memorials, III, 89, 135 and 240; Cobbett's Parliamentary History, XXXI, 550. See also Hume's essay ‘Whether the British Government inclines more to absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic’, The Philosophical Works of David Hume (4 vols. Edinburgh, 1826), III, 56.Google Scholar

40 Wyvill, C., Political Papers (6 vols. York, 1794–1806), VI, Part ii, 82.Google Scholar

41 History, pp. 57–8.

42 Ibid. pp. 35–6.

43 Ibid. p. 146 n.

44 Ibid. pp. 38–9. The relevance of this passage was recognized when the Regency question again came to the fore in 1810. See Morning Chronicle, 23 November 1810.

45 Dibdin, loc. cit.

46 Monthly Review, LVI, 185–200, and LVII, 65–79 and 190–9.

47 Quarterly Review, IX, 314. For another strongly unfavourable judgement, see Landor, Walter Savage, Fox, Charles James, ed. Stephen Wheeler (London, 1907), p. 75.Google Scholar

48 Critic, British, XXXII, 209–25; Philopatris Varvicensis, Characters of the late Charles James Fox (London, 1809), pp. 584–767.Google Scholar

49 Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh, ed. Mackintosh, R.J. (2 vols. London, 1835), II, 156.Google Scholar

50 Heywood, S.A Vindication of Mr Fox's History of the early part of the Reign of James the Second (London, 1811), pp. 423–4.Google Scholar Heywood's book was cleverly argued, but very long (nearly twice the length of Rose's Observations); for a witty summary, see Sydney Smith's article in Edinburgh Review, XVIII, 325–343.

51 Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, ed. Horner, Leonard (2 vols. London, 1843). I, 424.Google Scholar

52 Edinburgh Review, xn, 271 ff. J. W. Ward maintained that Fox had chosen an unsuitable period, since it was neither sufficiently remote for him to be objective about it, nor sufficiently recent for him to have ‘ superior means of information’ (Letters to “ Ivy” from the 1st Earl of Dudley, ed. Romilly, S.H., London, 1905, pp. 69–70).Google Scholar

53 ‘Extract from Sir James Mackintosh's letter to R. S.', Add. MSS. 51510. (‘R. S.' I take to be Richard Sharp, M.P., a member of the Holland House circle, who was a regular correspondent of Mackintosh while the latter was in India.)

54 Life of William Lord Russell (London, 1819), pp. x and 258–63.Google Scholar

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57 Jeffrey (loc. cit.) described Fox's style as ‘lacking in vivacity’ and sometimes awkward; and in a private letter he went so far as to say that is was ‘often Unequivocally bad’—a judgement which was later echoed by Tom Moore. There is certainly a rather strained and even pretentious quality about Fox's formal prose which is absent from both his letters and his speeches. (See Cockburn, Henry Lord, Life of Lord Jeffrey, 2 vols, Edinburgh, 1852, II, 124;Google ScholarMemoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, ed. Russell, Lord John, 8 vols. London, 1853–1856, v. 306;Google ScholarQuarterly Review, IX, 328; and Macaulay's essay on Sir James Mackintosh, Edinburgh Review, LXI, 266–7.) As to the form of Fox's work, Jeffrey said that the narrative was ‘too minute and diffusive’ Fox tended to describe insignificant events in excessive detail, and his anxiety to ascertain and demonstrate the exact truth of every particular resulted in the narrative being ‘ too frequently interrupted by small controversies and petty indecisions’

58 Murley, J.T., ‘The Origin and Outbreak of the Anglo-French War of 1793’ (OxfordD.Phil. Thesis, 1959), p. 338.Google Scholar Jeffrey wrote: ‘Nothing, we are persuaded, can be more gratifying to his friends, than the impression of his character which this book will carry down to posterity’ (Edinburgh Review, XII, 273).

59 Aikin's Annual Review (1808), p. 103. Fox's work abounds in moral judgements—not always favourable to those with whom he sympathized politically; for instance he was outspoken in his condemnation of the proceedings on the Popish Plot (History, pp. 33–4).

60 , R.I. and Wilberforce, S., Life of William Wilberforce (5 vols. London, 1838), III, 386.Google Scholar

61 Heywood, op. cit. p. xxxvi.

62 As Burke told Lord Fitzwilliam in June 1791, anything which tended to disturb ‘the recognized ranks and orders, and the fixed properties in the nation’ would be fatal to the aristocratic Whigs (Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. Copeland, T.W. et al. , Cambridge and Chicago, 1958, VI, 272).Google Scholar

63 Speech to his Westminster constituents, 6 March 1783—quoted in Christie, I R., Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform (London, 1962), p. 177.Google Scholar

64 Butterfield, H., ‘Charles James Fox and the Whig Opposition in 1792’, Cambridge Historical Journal, XI (1949), 296–8Google Scholar and 324. As Burke put it in his Observations on the Conduct of the Minority (1793), Fox had ‘contented himself with defending the ruling factions in France, and with accusing the public councils of this kingdom of every sort of evil design on the liberties of the people; declaring distinctly, strongly and precisely that the whole danger of the nation was from the growth of the power of the crown’ (Works of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, 6 vols. London, 1887, III, 475).Google Scholar

65 See, for instance, Fox to Holland, 5 January 1799, Memorials, III, 149.

66 Burke said of the system which the New Whigs had adopted:‘ …its great object is not (as they pretend to delude worthy people to their Ruin) the destruction of all absolute Monarchies, but totally to root out that thing called an Aristocrate or Nobleman and Gentleman’(Burke to Fitzwilliam, 21 November 1791, Correspondence of Edmund Burke, VI, 451).

67 Pares, R., King George III and the Politicians (Oxford, 1953), p. 135;Google ScholarChristie, I.R., postscript to ‘Charles James Fox’, History Today, VIII (1958), 283.Google Scholar

68 Pares, op. cit. p. 57.