Thomas Foxe

“ Harpsfield, his archdeacon, to converse with him. The Doctor was soon out of humour at his replies, called him peevish boy, and asked him if he thought he went about to damn his soul? "I am persuaded," said Thomas, "that you labour to promote the dark kingdom of the devil, not for the love of the truth." These words the doctor conveyed to the bishop, who, in a passion that almost prevented articulation, came to Thomas, and said, "Dost thou answer my archdeacon thus, thou naughty boy? ”

“ That at the time of his execution he requested sir Thomas Erpington to procure protection to the followers of Wicklilf, and the maintainers of the antipapal doctrines, in case he (the lord Cobham) should rise from the dead the third day. ”

“ Here he met with the celebrated martyr William Tindal, and Miles Coverdale, both voluntary exiles from their country for their aversion to popish superstition and idolatry. They were the instruments of his conversion; and he united with them in that translation of the Bible into English, entitled "The Translation of Thomas Matthew." From the scriptures he knew that unlawful vows may be lawfully broken; hence he married, and removed to Wittenberg in Saxony, for the improvement of learning ”

“ There is not the slightest reason to believe that Fox, if he had remained in office, would have hesitated one moment about concluding a treaty on such conditions. Unhappily that great and most amiable man was, at this crisis, hurried by his passions into an error which made his genius and his virtues, during a long course of years, almost useless to his country. ”

“ Fox died at his residence near Auckland, New Zealand, on 23 June 1893, aged 81 (Times, 24 June 1893) . Fox's generous nature and quick impulsive temperament made him an impatient critic alike of Sir George Grey's devious tactics, and of the slow-moving policy of the colonial office. The same qualities caused him to show to better advantage as the fighting leader of an opposition than when on the defensive as minister. But as his colony's strenuous champion and as the far-sighted advocate of peace and temperance, he is remembered with reverence in New Zealand. ”

“ Fox’s appearance in his place necessary, it told with great effect upon his constitution at this time: indeed, Fox was dying from the effects of disease augmented by the cares of office, and a laborious attendance on the house; and though this was visible, no mercy was shown him by his opponents. He did not long survive after the session was closed: he died on the 13th of September, and was buried by the side of his great rival, Pitt, in Westminster Abbey. His character as a politician has been seen in previous pages; as a man, he seems to have been loved in life and lamented in his death. ”

“ George Fox says, "It was opened to me," or "at the command of God I did so and so." "Then at the command of God, on the ninth day of the seventh month 1643 (Fox being just nineteen) , I left my relations and brake off all familiarity or friendship with young or old." "About the beginning of the year 1647 I was moved of the Lord to go into Darbyshire." Fox hears voices and he sees visions, some of which he brings before the reader with apocalyptic power in the simple and strong English, alike untutored and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his contemporary, he was a master. ”

“ On the other hand, there were differences of opinion between them, Foxe favouring the liberal tendencies of ‘the new learning.’ The sense of rivalry disclosed itself in riotous attacks, in which a former principal of Brasenose Hall was concerned, upon the builders of Foxe's new college of Corpus Christi. Although Smyth retained till his death his office of president of Wales, his name, after his patrons' deaths, practically disappears from the domestic state papers. Foxe's influence was probably the cause of his retirement. ”

“ Charles James Fox died September 13, 1806. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time, having assumed office on the 5th February, shortly after the death of William Pitt. Wordsworth's sadness on this occasion, his recognition of Fox as great and good, and as "a Power" that was "passing from the earth," may have been due partly to personal and political sympathy, but also probably to Fox's appreciation of the better [Pg 49] side of the French Revolution, and to his welcoming the pacific proposals of Talleyrand, perhaps also to his efforts for the abolition of slavery. ”

“ Fox had many noble and amiable qualities, which in private life shone forth in full lustre, and made him dear to his children, to his dependants, and to his friends; but as a public man he had no title to esteem. In him the vices which were common to the whole school of Walpole appeared, not perhaps in their worst, but certainly in their most prominent form; for his parliamentary and official talents made all his faults conspicuous. His courage, his vehement temper, his contempt for appearances, led him to display much that others, quite as unscrupulous as himself, covered with a decent veil. ”

“ There was Fox, I should find him at the office. But it needed a change of tone before I could contemplate with equanimity the meeting of that individual. I had been preparing myself to confront all the ethically excellent young men and Fox was, ethically speaking, far from excellent, middle-aged, rubicund, leery—a free lance of genius. I made the necessary change in my tone of mind and ran him to earth.
The Watteau room was further enlivened by the introduction of a scarlet plush couch of sumptuous design. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Defenceless and obnoxious as More then was, no man was hardy enough to dispute his truth. Foxe was the first, who, thirty years afterwards, ventured to oppose it in a vague statement, which we know to be in some respects inaccurate. ”

“ Fox is drawn riding on the back of the lady; and again, sitting in a tap-room with the duchess on his knee; and in another picture, hobnobbing with a coster-monger, while the duchess has her shoes mended by a cobbler, and pays the cobbler's wife with a purse of gold. Fox chops off the head of the king; he is a traitor, a republican, a Jacobin, a confederate with the French, a forestaller, a buyer-up of corn with which to feed the enemy, a sot, a gambler—every thing that is bad. His very death-bed forms the subject of a brutal caricature. ”

“ Then had come a sudden turn of fortune, like that in Virgil's foot-race. Fox had stumbled in the mire, and had not only been defeated, but befouled. Pitt had reached the goal, and received the prize. The emoluments of the Pay Office might induce the defeated statesman to submit in silence to the ascendency of his competitor, but could not satisfy a mind conscious of great powers, and sore from great vexations. As soon, therefore, as a party arose adverse to the war and to the supremacy of the great war minister, the hopes of Fox began to revive. ”

“ Before he was 27, Fox had passed through more [Pg 19] varied experience than many have in a long life-time. Honour and revilings, converts and imprisonments, love for the gospel's sake and cruel beatings by the mob, nearly ending in death—these had already been his portion. But his work was now bearing much fruit. In one twelve-months, 1650-1, he gained such staunch helpers as Richard Farnsworth, James Nayler, William Dewsbury, Justice Hotham, and Captain Purslow. Soon afterwards the Fells of Swarthmoor were led to Christ by his preaching and became the most devoted of adherents. ”

“ George struggled hard against it; he hated Fox not merely for political reasons, but because he believed that he encouraged the Prince of Wales in evil courses, and in unfilial conduct (ib. i. 269) . The prince was intimate with Fox, and upheld him as a politician, greatly to his father's annoyance. Although the king used every effort to exclude Fox from the administration (Courts and Cabinets, i. 169, 172, 213) , he was beaten by the coalition, and on 2 April Fox took office as foreign secretary with North and under the headship of the Duke of Portland. ”

“ He received a good political education. The first lord was educated by Sir Robert Walpole. Mr. Fox was educated by his father. The late lord was educated by Mr. Fox. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by the first Lord Holland, made his great talents useless, and worse than useless, to the state. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by Mr. Fox led him, at the commencement of his public life, into great faults which, though afterwards nobly expiated, were never forgotten. ”

“ He constantly urged him to delay writing in order to gain "more certain intelligence." But the careful investigation which he recommended did not fall in with the particular genius and uncritical methods of Foxe, who, perhaps on account of his necessitous condition, worked away with a will on the unsifted tales and reports as they came to hand, so that the book in its Latin form was completed, almost to the end of the reign of Mary, and was published at Basle, before his return to England in 1559. ”

“ Yet was he a person to whom the court, even in that extremity, was unwilling to have recourse. He had always been regarded 44as a Whig of the Whigs. He had been the friend and disciple of Walpole. He had long been connected by close ties with William Duke of Cumberland. By the Tories he was more hated than any man living. So strong was their aversion to him that when, in the late reign, he had attempted to form a party against the Duke of Newcastle, they had thrown all their weight into Newcastle’s scale. By the Scots, Fox was abhorred as the confidential friend of the conqueror of Culloden. ”

“ But a punctilious sense of personal dignity was no part of the character of Henry Fox.
We have not time to enumerate all the other men of weight who were, by some tie or other, attached to the Government. We may mention Hardwicke, reputed the first lawyer of the age; Legge, reputed the first financier of the age; the acute and ready Oswald; the bold and humorous Nugent; Charles Townshend, the most brilliant and versatile of mankind; Elliot, Barrington, North, Pratt. ”

“ Fox treated me with a kind of deference—as if I were a great unknown. His “you literary men” was pleasing. It was the homage that the pretender pays to the legitimate prince; the recognition due to the real thing from the machine-made imitation; the homage of the builder to the architect.
“Ah, yes,” it seemed to say, “we jobbing men run up our rows and rows of houses; build whole towns and fill the papers for years. But when we want something special—something monumental—we have to come to you.”
Fox came in again. ”

“ While refusing to honour an unchristian statute by keeping it, he bore patiently and unresistingly the legal penalties, unshaken in his loyalty to the government and unsoured in his disposition towards mankind. But further, Fox clearly saw that endurance was sure to end in victory, and he inspired his friends with the same conviction. "The more they imprison me," he writes triumphantly, "the more the truth spreads." In the same spirit said William Penn at a later date, "I will weary out their malice. Neither great nor good things were ever attained without loss and hardship. ”

“ The first I find that was thus immediately reached in his mind, was a young man called George Fox, born at Drayton in Leicestershire, in the month called July, in the year 1624, from parents that were members of the public church, or church of England, as appeareth to me from a paper, in his life-time drawn up by his order, at my request, and sent me. His father was Christopher Fox, a weaver by trade, an honest man, and of such a virtuous life, that his neighbours were used to call him Righteous Christer. ”

“ One poor man to whom a pension had been given for his gallantry in a fight with smugglers, was deprived of it because he had been befriended by the Duke of Grafton. An aged widow, who, on account of her husband’s services in the navy, had, many years before, been made housekeeper to a public office, was dismissed from her situation, because it was imagined that she was distantly connected by marriage with the Cavendish family. The public clamour, as may well be supposed, grew daily louder and louder. But the louder it grew, the more resolutely did Fox go on with the work which he had begun. ”

“ That it failed entirely to unbalance his mind and destroy his character only serves to show the sterling temper of Fox's metal. His youth was like his childhood, petted, spoiled, wayward, capricious, and captivating. Every one loved him, his father, his father's friends, the school companions with whom he wrote Latin verses in praise of lovely ladies with lovely names. All through his life the love of men and the love of women was given to him with a generosity that was only equal to the lovable nature that compelled and commanded it. His career is one record of unrivalled precocity. ”