The Holland House Circle

suitor?Lord Holland's cupidity?A well-feathered nest?The beginnings of Charles Fox? His brother Stephen?Lord Holland's minority. " I HE Fox family rose with a rapidity characteristic X. of the seventeenth century, when everything was possible to the adroit courtier. Sir Stephen, the founder of its fortunes, who was born in 1627, came from what his anonymous biographer calls " honest and approved parents of a middle station " in Wiltshire. He entered the household of the Earl of Northumberland, High Admiral of England, as a valet, and then passed into the service of that nobleman's brother, Lord Percy. After helping his master in the management of the Ordnance Board during the campaign of 1651, which ended in the overthrow of the Royalists at Worcester, he took an active part in smuggling Prince Charles out of the country, and was steward and collector of intelligence to the vagabond Court. Through the excellence of his information he was able to announce the news of Cromwell's death to the Prince six hours before any express reached Brussels. After the Restoration, Stephen Fox stood high in the Royal favour and held various lucrative appointments. In 168o his friend and admirer, Evelyn, reckoned him to be worth .£2oo,ooo or more, "honestly got and unenvied, which is next to a miracle." Honesty is a relative virtue. Fox's confidences to the sympathetic Pepys show that he farmed the Paymastership-General to some purpose, extracting a comfortable twelve per...