William Fox

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pitt was slender, boyish, precise, punctilious in attire, his native composure only occasionally lightened by a flash of humor or sweetened by a show of playfulness, old beyond his years and young to the end of his short life, sternly self-restrained and self-commanded, gracious in a kind of melancholy, unconscious charm, a curiously unadorned, uncolored personality, that attracted where it did attract with a magnetism that was perhaps all the more potent for being somewhat difficult to explain. Fox was always a lover in many kinds of love, fugitive, venal, illicit, honorable, and enduring. ”

“ FOX, SIR WILLIAM (1812-1893) , New Zealand statesman, third son of George Townshend Fox, deputy-lieutenant for Durham county, was born in England on the 9th of June 1812, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1832. Called to the bar in 1842, he emigrated immediately thereafter to New Zealand, where, on the death of Captain Arthur Wakefield, killed in 1843 in the Wairau massacre, he became the New Zealand Company’s agent for the South Island. ”

“ He was the last man in the world to act on the worldly-wise maxim that an enemy should always be treated as if he may one day be a friend, and a friend as if he might become an enemy. On the 29th of November 1779 Fox was wounded in a duel with Mr William Adam, a supporter of Lord North’s whom he had savagely denounced. ”

“ The king made a prolonged resistance to the pressure put on him to accept Fox and North as his ministers (see Pitt, William) . On the 2nd of April he was constrained to submit to the formation of a new ministry, in which the duke of Portland was prime minister and Fox and North were secretaries of state. The new administration was ill liked by some of the followers of both. Fox increased its unpopularity both in the House and in the country by consenting against the wish of most of his colleagues to ask for the grant of a sum of £100,000 a year to the prince of Wales. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fox stayed in Italy longer than he intended, for Mrs. Armistead sprained her ankle (Life of Sir G. Elliot, i. 225) . During his whole tour he never opened a newspaper except once to see how his bets had been decided at Newmarket, and as he had left no address had no news from England (ib. p. 236) . In November a messenger from the Duke of Portland found him at Bologna. His party were anxious for his presence, for the king had become insane. After travelling incessantly night and day for nine days he arrived in London on the 24th, suffering in health from his hurried journey (ib. p. 240) . ”

“ He returned to England, was again imprisoned for refusing to pay tithes, revisited Holland in 1684, extending his travels to Hamburg, Holstein, and Dantzic, and a few years before his death established himself in London, where he rested from his labors, although he continued to preach occasionally. Fox was a man of genuine piety, and his meekness, humility, and excellence in the explanation of Scripture and in prayer are mentioned in terms of high praise by his disciple, William Penn. ”

“ The system was completed by the institution of the yearly meeting, first held on 6 Jan. 1669.
In the organisation of his mission Fox had the valuable help of a remarkable woman, whom he afterwards married, Margaret Fell [q. v.] , named by Barclay ‘the Lady Huntingdon of the new society’ (Inner Life, p. 259) . She had been carried away by the teaching of William Lampett, who then held the perpetual curacy of Ulverston; he is explicitly described by Fox as ‘a ranter’ (original manuscript of Journal, p. 61) . It was by degrees that Fox's teaching exerted a regulative influence over her mind. ”

“ On the face of it there is nothing that seems not merely to justify, but even to palliate, the conduct of Fox and Burke. Ugly as the deed seemed to the men of their day, to the men who believed in them, trusted them, loved them, it seems no less ugly to those who at the distance of a century revere their memories and cherish their teachings. One thing may be, must be, assumed by those before whom the lives of Fox and Burke lie bare—that men so animated by high principles, so illuminated by high ideals, cannot deliberately, of set purpose, have sinned against the light. ”

“ Then of those ten men of his he sent back two, and Fox going between them, as though he should be slain if he misled them; and he and the eight abided there wisely and warily, standing silently some six feet from each other, moving scarce at all, but looking like images fashioned of brown copper and iron; holding their casting-spears (which be marvellous heavy weapons) and girt with the sax. ”

“ The great coalition which was to stand so strong and to work such wonders was destined to vanish like a breath after accomplishing nothing, and to condemn Fox with all his hopes and dreams to a career of almost unbroken opposition for the rest of his life. If anything in Fox's checkered career could be more tragic than the degradation of his union with the politician whom he declared to be void of every principle of honor and honesty, it was the abiding consequences of the retribution that followed it. Fox had fought hard and with success to live down the follies of his youth. ”

“ To the misgoverned, misguided, splendidly reckless boyhood and early manhood of Fox Pitt opposed the gravity and stillness of his youth. The exuberant animal vitality of Fox, wasting itself overlong in the flame of aimless passions, was emphasized by the solid reserve, the passionless austerity of Pitt. The one man was compact of all the heady enthusiasms, the splendid generosities of a nature rich in the vitality that sought eagerly new outlets for its energy, that played hard as it worked hard, that exulted in extremes. ”

“ For in all things he acquitted himself like a man, yea, a strong man, a new and heavenly-minded man; a divine and a naturalist, and all of God Almighty's making." [F]
[46]
THE TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM PENN CONCERNING THAT FAITHFUL SERVANT GEORGE FOX.
The blessed instrument of and in this day of God, and of whom I am now about to write, was George Fox, distinguished from another of that name, by that other's addition of younger to his name in all his writings; not that he was so in years, but that he was so in the truth; but he was also a worthy man, witness and servant of God in his time. ”

“ Now, though G. Fox found good entertainment, yet he did not settle there, but kept in continual motion, going from one place to another, to beget souls unto God. I do not intend to relate all his occurrences, but will give a short hint only of some of the chief.
Coming then towards night into Patrington, he walked through the town, and meeting the priest in the street, he warned both him and the people to repent, and turn to the Lord. And people gathering about him, he declared to them the word of life, directing them to the inward word, viz. the light wherewith they are enlightened. ”

“ There Fox indulged his tastes for gardening and literature, and thoroughly enjoyed a country life in company with a woman to whom he was sincerely attached, and who devoted herself to promoting his happiness. For some years he stayed in London during the sessions of parliament, and actively though vainly led the opposition. ”

“ My soul is deeply affected with this sudden great loss. Surely it portends to us evils to come. A prince indeed is fallen in Israel to-day!" and in a postscript he adds, "He died as he lived, minding the things of God and His church to the last, in a universal spirit."
Fox's Journal was published soon after his death, with a lengthy preface by his friend William Penn, containing a warm tribute to his personal worth and Christian labors. The Journal gives us a better and more vivid idea of the man than any biography that has been written. ”

“ His ardent nature was laid hold of by the gospel in its fulness, and the result was a spirituality at once delicate and strong.
The same features attracted me in William Penn. He also had many of the gifts of the evangelist. He could collect and hold a crowd almost as well as Fox, and preach them as full a gospel. If other schemes had not claimed so large a share of his life, I think he might have done an evangelistic work equal to that done by George Fox.
Robert Barclay deserves to be highly honoured as one who truly devoted his all to Christ. ”

“ But Fox was a very different type of man. Had he been as keen for his own honor as he was eager in the acquisition of money, had he been as successful in building up a record of great deeds as he was successful in building up an enormous fortune, he might have left behind him one of the greatest names in the history of his age. ”

“ He did most useful work in 1880 as joint commissioner with Sir Francis Bell in settling the native land claims on the west coast of the north island in an equitable manner a work the unfair postponement of which had bred great discontent and alarm, and after doing which Fox was knighted. The rest of his public life was devoted to an earnest advocacy of temperance. The prohibition movement, now so strong in New Zealand, owes much to his long and zealous help.
Fox's active career was chiefly marked by the part he took in gaining self-government for New Zealand ”

“ The outer seeming of each is almost as familiar as the forms and faces of contemporaries. Fox was massively {213} corpulent, furiously untidy, a heroic sloven, his bull throat and cheeks too often black with a three days' beard, infinitely lovable, exquisitely cultured, capable of the noblest tenderness, yet with a kind of grossness sometimes that was but a part, and perhaps an inevitable part, of his wide humanity. ”

“ Those who study their age and their career are separated as keenly and as hotly to-day as they were separated keenly and hotly a hundred years ago into the followers of Charles James Fox or the followers of William Pitt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This Hallblithe deemed wonderful, that no less out on the open heath and brow of the land than in the shut-in cave, all that tumult of the wind had fallen, and the cloudless night was calm, and with a little air blowing from the south and the landward.
Therewithal was Fox done with his loud-voiced braggart mood, and spoke gently and peaceably like to a wayfarer, who hath business of his to look to as other men. Now he pointed to certain rocks or low crags that a little way off rose like a reef out of the treeless plain ”