Family and Education

b. 7 Mar. 1802, 2nd but o. surv. legit. s. of Henry Richard, 3rd Bar. Holland, and Elizabeth, da. and h. of Richard Vassall of Jamaica and Golden Square, London, div. w. of Sir Godfrey Vassall† (otherwise Webster), 4th bt., of Battle Abbey, Suss.; bro. of Charles Richard Fox*. educ. privately at home and by Rev. Matthew Marsh, rect. of Winterslow, Wilts. 1817-19; Christ Church, Oxf. 1819. m. 9 May 1833 at Florence, Lady Mary Augusta Coventry, da. of George William Coventry*, 8th earl of Coventry, s.p. suc. fa. as 4th Bar. Holland 22 Oct. 1840; gt.-aunt Elizabeth Fox (wid. of Charles James Fox†) to St. Anne’s Hill, Chertsey, Surr. 1842. d. 18 Dec. 1859.

Offices Held

Attaché to spec. mission to Belgium 1831; sec. of legation, Sardinia 1832-5; sec. of embassy, Austria 1835-7 and minister plenip. ad int. 1835-6; minister plenip. Germanic Federation (Frankfort) 1838, Tuscany 1839-46.

Biography

After meeting Fox at his parents’ home in August 1832, when he was a 30-year-old bachelor just embarked on a belated diplomatic career, Macaulay wrote:

He scarcely ever speaks in the society of Holland House. Rogers ... once said to me of him, ‘Observe that man. He never talks to men. He never talks to girls. But, when he can get into a circle of old tabbies, he is just in his element. He will sit clacking with an old woman for hours together. That always settles my opinion of a young fellow.’ This description is quite correct. Yet Fox’s address is extremely polished, his person agreeable, and his mind, I believe, not uncultivated. He was, on this occasion, very courteous to me. But I despise his shallowness and instability.

Fifteen months later, when Fox was freshly married to Lady Augusta Coventry, ‘a pretty little damsel, as red as a cherry and as plump as a partridge’, Macaulay was more indulgent towards him:

He is ... no favourite of mine. But I cannot deny that his powers of conversation are considerable, and his manners very sweet and courteous. Towards women - both his own wife and other men’s wives - his manner is at once so respectful and caressing that I do not wonder at the havoc which he has made among the ladies. But he is lame and cannot walk without a stick, - a great drawback on his handsome face and figure.1

Fox’s formidable, capricious and possessive mother, who was singularly devoid of normal maternal feelings, told him when he was 28 that his ‘infirmity’ - a slight deformity of the hip and spine which made him permanently lame - ‘regulated all our plans and motions for years’.2 In reality Fox, who was born two years after the death in infancy of the Hollands’ first legitimate son, Stephen, was alternately neglected by his parents and overexposed to the pretentious wit and intellectualism of adult society at Holland House, which he grew to hate. He always admired and loved his father, but became increasingly alienated from Lady Holland. Above all, as an indolent, wilful, cynical young man, with, by his own admission, ‘not a spark’ of ‘ambition’, he resented his parents’ assumption that as Charles James Fox’s great-nephew he was destined, even morally obliged, to go into politics. Sydney Smith pertinently observed to Lady Grey in 1823 that he would be ‘nothing but agreeable; enough for any young man if he was not a Fox, and if the country did not seem to have acquired an hereditary right to his talents, and services’.3

‘A clever and suprafine boy’, as Smith put it, he was considered too delicate for public school and was educated at home, first by the Rev. Philip Shuttleworth, fellow and later warden of New College, Oxford, and between 1815 and 1817 by the ex-Catholic theologian Joseph Blanco White, who was advised by Holland that Henry ‘above all requires constant attention and conversation to excite his diligence and to occupy and divert his mind’.4 From the summer of 1817 until he went up to Oxford in October 1819 he spent periods with the Rev. Matthew Marsh, rector of Winterslow, near Salisbury. Smith applauded this turn of events in January 1818: ‘Henry ... is a very unusual boy, and he wanted to be exposed a little more to the open air of the world’.5 Fox never took to university life, though he was a voracious reader of books which interested him and took pleasure in the company of a small circle of college friends, notably William Henry Greville (younger brother of the diarist), George Howard* (grandson of the 5th earl of Carlisle) and John Stuart Wortley* (son of the Member for Yorkshire). He was one of the mass deputation which presented the University’s loyal address to George IV, 26 Apr. 1820, when Holland commented jestingly to his elder illegitimate brother Charles:

The king shook hands and spoke to him and he must be a good Whig indeed if such favour engrafted on an Oxford education does not infuse an alloy of Toryism ... He reads a little more than he did, but he has quite given up Greek and will not try for his degree, which with his parts and quickness a very little application would enable him to obtain.

Yet Fox wrote in his journal only three months later:

Every day I live I am more and more persuaded not to meddle in politics; they separate the best friends, they destroy all social intercourse. And why? Is it for power? Is it for popularity? How unenviable they are separately! How seldom you see them combined; and most politicians have neither.6

After spending the summer of 1821 with his parents in Paris he fretted under ‘the dull monotony of life at Holland House’ in September; and in the Christmas vacation he suffered ‘endurance vile’ in the cold there, longing to return to the urban comforts of ‘old smoky’.7 In March 1822 he persuaded his father to let him leave Oxford, but only after a ‘sharp correspondence’ which subsequently caused him a few stabs of filial guilt: he was surprised to feel ‘every now and then a pang’ of regret when he packed his bags and left the place ‘for ever’ in early May.8

Fox was a ladies’ man, drawn particularly to older, usually married, women for general gratification, but he also fell in love at the drop of a hat with pretty girls of his own age, and he was curiously eager to marry, perhaps to assert and secure his independence. In the summer of 1822, when he was in Edinburgh during the king’s Scottish jaunt, he brought to a head a family row over his wish to marry Canning’s daughter Harriet. His horrified parents would not hear of it, objecting ostensibly on the grounds of Fox’s youth and their own meagre financial resources, and he reluctantly submitted to the veto.9 He reflected at the end of the year that ‘my own folly and impatience has only placed me in an awkward and not an advantageous position’. At that time Lord John Russell*, whom the Hollands had taken up almost as a surrogate son, interested and active in politics, warned Lady Holland:

I have no doubt of his abilities, but ... I have doubts whether he will do anything, partly because his father has done something, and partly from the straggling unsettled manner in which you bring up your sons. It is a sad thing that clever as he is, he is not able to take a common degree at Oxford ... As to his coming into Parliament I see no need for hurry. He is sure to be brought in by a friend in a short time. At 21 a young man either makes bad speeches or considers the House as a bore. Henry would probably go down after dinner, vote and then go to Almack’s to praise Canning’s fine speech. It is well he should feel anxious to come in before he does ... After all, however, he is one of the cleverest young men I ever saw and may do well if he is not spoilt by dowagers.10

In February 1823 Fox, having been advised by his mother to be ‘careful of your health, take opening physics and wrap yourself up well’, went with Stuart Wortley on a four month tour to Paris, Genoa (where he called on Byron), Pisa, Florence and Geneva. He acquired a taste for tobacco and for life in ‘southern climes’, noting that ‘few are the charms that England offers me’ and that he was ‘greatly wanting in that satisfied, tranquil, imperturbable conviction that England is far superior to the rest of the world’.11 Stuart Wortley was about to be returned to Parliament for his family’s borough; and Holland tried to convince Fox of the ‘attraction’ of public service through participation in the work of Commons committees, where ‘the whole business of this country’ was done.12 In London in the summer of 1823 he fell in love with Theresa, the daughter of George Villiers† (brother of the 2nd and 3rd earls of Clarendon), who had been disgraced for embezzling public money as paymaster of marines. Their relationship became a close, though fraught one, but the Hollands refused to sanction a marriage, supposedly on the score of Theresa’s youth and poor financial prospects.13 In June 1824 Fox went abroad again, initially to Paris, from where Robert Adair†, an old family friend, who took him under his wing, assured Lady Holland that he was ‘very well, very happy, and disposed to do anything that is proposed to him’ and was ‘not left to lounge about the boulevard, and fall into the abominable English society with which Paris abounds’.14 Fox obtained his father’s permission (with a caution about expense) to winter in Italy; but Holland’s observation that a long absence might be ‘an impediment to your coming into Parliament’ prompted the following private reflection:

I am sorry to see his heart so bent upon my entering into politics, for which I have neither talents nor disposition ... If ... I felt any eagerness or strong opinion upon any subject I would not allow my vanity or fear of failure to overcome my opinions; but to be exposed to the reproach and contempt of half England for not supporting the fame of my name and family on a stage I am unwilling to appear on, and to which I have rather a repugnance, is still more hopeless. But with a wise and affectionate father I feel I should be wretched and unworthy of his tenderness if I were not to yield to whatever may be his wishes and try to fulfil his intentions, or at least allow him an opportunity of discovering his mistake by my own failure and disgrace ... I only possess a little quickness, which enables me to disguise my ignorance and to make the most of the little I do know. I have no steadiness, perseverance or application; I seize results and have not patience for details. This succeeds well enough in conversation; but in Parliament more depth and solidity is required, which I could only acquire by application and industry - efforts I am not capable of making except for something that deeply interests me, which Mr. Hume’s economy, Lord John Russell’s reform, or Mr. Wortley’s game laws, do not in the least. I can conceive questions arising in which I willingly and earnestly should engage - the liberty of some continental country, the justice or injustice of some future war; but in these piping times of peace I cannot work myself up to the proper state of factious, peevish discontent, which I ought to cherish to become a worthy member of the opposition benches.15

If his parents were unaware of the depth of his aversion to a political career, they were soon enlightened, for in early October 1824 Russell reported to them the opinion of John Fazakerley*, with whom and his wife Fox had recently stayed at Lausanne:

‘Henry Fox ... is most amiable and agreeable, quite unlikely, I think, to make any exertion in public life: he seems to lament that his family should expect such an effort from him, and if these are his feelings it is perhaps a pity that they should expose themselves to disappointment more acute than if the experiment had not been made’.

A few months later the veteran Whig Tierney confided to Lord Grey that he had ‘no hope’ of Fox’s success in Parliament, for he ‘has neither the energy nor the ambition which is necessary to call forth the talents he possesses’.16

Fox was ill with a deranged stomach at Venice, but reached Rome in November and moved on to Naples in January 1825.17 From there he told Eleanor Fazakerley, his latest confidante, that he was so sick of hearing his father’s ‘balderdash’ about the ‘honour, distinction and delight of succeeding’ in Parliament that he was ‘ready to wish myself born a Provencal peasant without prospects or situation’; and a little later:

The day alas! approaches when bon que malgre I am to become a steady voter and a red hot patriot foaming and spluttering about things I care not three straws for one way or another. But sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.18

Indeed, at this very moment the 2nd Baron Yarborough was offering Holland, through a third party, to return Fox free of charge and unfettered by any ‘unpleasant conditions’ for Newtown, Isle of Wight, at the next general election.19 Holland eagerly accepted, without consulting Fox, whose response when he was informed was dutiful but unenthusiastic.20 Three weeks later he went to Malta to see his brother, and together they visited Corfu and Cephalonia, the siege of Missolonghi and Ibrahim Pasha’s camp. Holland had written to Charles, 4 Apr.:

His letters show some progress in knowledge and other improvement ... He is to come into Parliament ... I hope he shows in conversation or at least feels in his heart more pleasure at the prospect than he expresses in his letters. As to his politics I have no reason to believe he differs from me, and if he did ... I should not blame or interfere with him, but I do not like in a young one an indifference on such matters ... I am sometimes vexed at the prospect of a boy of so excellent an understanding, delightful manners and warm affections as Harry falling into a sort of indolent, pococurante philosophy which may make his life unprofitable to others and tedious and unsatisfactory to himself.21

Back at Naples in the summer he became stormily involved with Byron’s former mistress Teresa Guiccioli and cultivated Lady Deerhurst, wife of the disreputable future 8th earl of Coventry, but remained emotionally though confusedly attached to Theresa Villiers, to the consternation of his parents, who when they found out precipitated a distressing correspondence.22 Anticipating departure from Naples (where he had been ‘very very happy, more so than I ever expected to be again and more than I ever can be in future’), having been summoned to meet his parents in Paris, whence he was to return to England and Parliament, he moaned to Eleanor Fazakerley that ‘I am about to open a door to all sorts of horrors’. He confided to her:

My mind has long been made up - perhaps some time may intervene before I can carry my intention into execution - but my intention is to pass my life on this side of the Alps. I foresee that I shall not be able to settle as I wish in England ... I have no local attachments, no John Bull feelings, I hate the climate, dislike the manners and feel a most shameful indifference to the politics of the country.23

She tried to convince him that England had its merits and that he might be ‘amused’ by Parliament.24 As it happened, a convenient riding accident, followed by some alarmingly ‘violent palpitations’ of the heart kept him in Naples until mid-December 1825, when he moved to Rome. At St. Peter’s on the 23rd he was impressed by the ‘mystery and solemnity’ of Catholic church ritual, which ‘hides the want of solidity of its foundation and leaves the imagination at work’.25 He postponed his journey to Paris until the early spring of 1826, but was horrified by his father’s casual written reference to the possibility of his being put up for Bedfordshire (where their Ampthill estate lay) at the impending general election:

I hope ... [it] was merely a joke for ... I must openly decline any such honour. I have not health, inclination or opinions that would induce me to undergo the fatigue, odium and decision that is necessary for a county Member. If I come into Parliament (and you well know that I had much much rather not come in at all) I come in merely to please you and to satisfy or rather to disappoint your ambition by a display of total unfitness for an occupation for which I have no sort of inclination ... If there really was any notion or if you see it likely that such a notion should spring up for the convenience of the Russells, the Whitbreads, the Pyms or for the laudable diversion of annoying the adverse party I should take it particularly kind of you to baffle such intentions.

Holland assured him that it was not a ‘serious design’, but rebuked him for his dismissal of party obligations:

As to your sneer of convenience to Russells, Whitbreads, etc. and at what you are pleased to call our indulgent and candid friends, I must say that it little becomes anyone of our name who have derived so much consideration and even existence in the world from such connections to speak of them either as not worth having, or as not liberally bestowed upon us when we deserve it. We Foxes owe at least as much to party as party men owe to us.

Fox was conciliatory, but defended himself:

I do not see why I am to be called conceited because I cannot choose the same pursuits and inclinations. As to coming into Parliament ... I will do it as you wish it ... I did not mean to say I had any particular objection or pleasure in seeing the faults of our party more than of another.26

He set off for Paris in late February with ‘painful and disagreeable feelings’, which were intensified when, within minutes of his arrival on 6 Mar. 1826 he learnt that he was about to be returned on a vacancy for Horsham by the 12th duke of Norfolk; this, as he told Mrs. Fazakerley, ‘cut sadly into some projects which I had and still fondly cherish’.27 He was allowed to plead illness as his excuse for not going immediately to Horsham, where Charles stood in for him; but he was expected to take his seat after Easter. Tierney looked forward to introducing him, but when he was told by Holland, who consoled himself with the thought that at least his political views were ‘quite reconcilable with [those of] an honest, independent Whig Member’, of Henry’s distressing ‘indifference’, he bemoaned the fecklessness of ‘all the young ones’. Russell commented to Lady Holland that at most Norfolk ‘must content himself with a lounger and be satisfied if Henry does not vote against his old Whig staunch opinions’.28 Under pressure from his father, who allowed the ‘clamour’ of the party notables to overcome his and Lady Holland’s worries about the Theresa Villiers affair, on which angry words were exchanged, Fox left Paris for England on 23 May. A handy three-week illness kept him away from Parliament, which was in any case dissolved on 2 June, and from the election formalities at Horsham on the 7th, when his brother again deputized for him. The Whig grandees were not amused.29 He was, however, well enough to become ‘once more entangled’ with Theresa, which brought down on him the wrath of Holland, who swore that he would ‘never consent to any connection’ with her family and ordered Fox abroad again. He admitted that he had been wrong in his initial impression that Fox ‘had not behaved with openness towards me’, and concluded that while he had ‘adhered to every promise’, he had acted foolishly. Fox, ‘sadly unhappy and agitated with a thousand apprehensions and doubts’, reached Paris on 7 July, Lausanne on 1 Aug. and Italy in late September 1826.30

On 3 Oct. Holland wrote to Norfolk explaining that Fox would be unable to take his seat at the meeting of the new Parliament in November and placing it at his disposal. He informed Fox of this at the same time, but the following day was surprised to receive a letter from him in which he offered to return home and try to make a fist of Parliament if his parents would allow him to marry Theresa Villiers. Holland, keen to have him back, initially gave ground to the extent of promising that they would ‘lay no restrictions with respect to your society or your time nor impose any conditions except that the discussion [of marriage] may not be renewed unless invited by me’. Norfolk assured Holland, who had informed him of Fox’s possible return, that there was no need to do anything about the seat ‘this side [of] Christmas’.31 On receiving a letter of 30 Oct. from Fox in Rome, which contained a ‘peremptory request for a decision’, Holland gave way completely, and in his reply of 15 Nov. released him from his promise not to marry without parental consent and invited him to return home ‘entirely master of your own actions’, preferably in time to vote for Catholic relief, which he expected to come on early in 1827. To that end, he wished Fox to be at least as far north as Nice before Christmas. A fortnight later the Hollands were ‘agitated’ to receive an ‘intemperate’ letter from Fox announcing that he had ended his relationship with Theresa and intended to stay abroad and renounce Parliament, and asking Holland to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds for him. Holland, who rebuked him for using harsh words towards his mother, was irritated to learn that he had gone to Naples, but, claiming to want him to come home on account of ‘my private comfort ... much more than idle dreams of your success in Parliament’, advised him to reflect and reconsider. He declined to act over the Hundreds until he had had a rational reply and still pressed Fox to put himself within easy reach of London by the first week in February 1827, so that he could either vacate in time for a pro-Catholic successor to be returned or, if that was impractical, ‘come over yourself to vote on that question even if you leave England and Parliament next day’.32 On Christmas Day Fox wrote to Holland from Rome confirming that his decision to finish with Theresa - ‘a victory of my reason over my inclinations’ - was irrevocable and that he had ‘no sort of intention under existing circumstances to return to England’, and explaining that he had already written to Norfolk ‘to relinquish my seat’. When his father still tried to persuade him to make himself available to vote on the Catholic question if necessary, he utterly refused, accusing Holland of stalling and of nursing ‘in the bottom of your heart ... a hope that if I was in England and Parliament events might occur ... that would make me consent to remain in the House’.33 A disappointed Holland finally accepted reality and secured the Hundreds for Fox on 5 Feb. 1827. He managed a wry joke:

To be sure, your parliamentary career will be an odd one - in two Parliaments and never within the walls of the House. What a price among collectors your franks will fetch! My uncle’s or Pitt’s will be nothing to it.34

A few weeks later Fox, as he had doubtless been planning for some time, sought permission to marry Natalie Potocka, a young Polish aristocrat, who was supposed to have £60,000. His ‘puzzled and confounded’ parents reluctantly consented, but the affair soon petered out.35 Fox, whose letters at this time showed an uncharacteristic interest in British politics (though Holland thought his ‘speculations at a distance are often fanciful or false conjectures’), expressed a wish to ‘enter the diplomatic line’. In January 1828 Lord Dudley, foreign secretary in the disintegrating Goderich ministry, offered Holland to give him an unpaid place as attaché at St. Petersburg, but Fox stipulated for somewhere in the warm South.36 He stayed in Italy, taking up again with Teresa Guiccioli, and resisting his family’s attempts to inveigle him into going home with ‘threats, taunts, reproaches’ and reports that his father was dying. Blaming his mother’s bullying ‘system’, he became ‘more resolved to remain away’.37 He did pay a flying visit to England - ‘a deplorable country ... for those who do not feel strong ambition and who have not vast wealth’ - in late 1829, but was back in Rome by March 1830. Upset by the death of his latest confidante, Lady Northampton, ‘the person on earth who cared most for me’, he went to Naples for the summer and to England in November, arriving just as his father kissed hands as lord president in the Grey ministry. Closing his journal, he reflected:

I look back upon life with much repentance. Not for the ambitious objects I have slighted, for had I attained them I should not have been happier, and had I failed in the attempt, which is more likely, I should have been mortified and miserable. But I have cruelly and wantonly played with the feelings of others, I have never believed anyone attached to me, and I have on that account ... determined not to be myself attached. My conduct towards Miss V., Mlle P., and Lady N. leaves me much to regret - especially the last two instances.38

Holland had ‘nothing to ask for him’ from the new premier, but dropped a hint about his diplomatic leanings.39 Nothing came of notions of his being put up for Arundel or even Bedfordshire at the 1831 general election, or of an offer made through Lord Duncannon*, the government whip, of an unnamed ‘certain’ seat for £1,200 a year.40 The duke of Bedford, who had been particularly critical of Fox’s conduct over Horsham, could not meet Holland’s subsequent request to give him the vacant seat for Tavistock.41 In July 1831 Adair took him as an attaché on his special mission to Brussels, and in February 1832, when it was suggested that he might go to the Lords if eldest sons were called up to force through the reform bill, he demurred, telling his father that ‘the career which I have just begun has ever been the best suited to my habits and occupations, and I am very sincerely anxious to continue with it’. However, he was again ‘wholly engrossed’ with Teresa Guiccioli in Paris at this time, and in May 1832 he left Brussels, apparently unwell. Adair wrote frankly to Holland:

I cannot guess at his future intentions ... Perhaps he has no fixed plan, but from what I see of him my notion is that except I were named to some mission in a warmer climate he would give the matter up ... the truth is that he does not like the business. He entered eagerly into it when he came here, but flagged very soon after the first excitement was over ... when he returns from any of his tours he never shows the least anxiety to know what has passed in his absence or even to put himself en courant. All this makes me afraid that diplomacy will never be a serious pursuit with him.42

A posting to Turin in September 1832 was more congenial to him. The following spring he married at Florence Lady Augusta Coventry (Lady Deerhurst’s daughter), ‘the very nicest little doll or plaything’ Creevey had ever seen; he surmised that she was ‘up to anything, as all Coventrys are’.43 The marriage was happy enough, although there were two stillborn children. In 1851 they adopted Marie, the illegitimate daughter of Victoire Magny of Soissons, who in 1872 married Prince Louis Liechtenstein. Fox subsequently served at Vienna, Frankfort and, most happily, at Florence, where the Conservatives kept him on in 1841 and did not recall him until July 1846, which ended his undistinguished career.44 On his father’s death in 1840 he succeeded to the peerage, but Holland’s will had given his widow extensive powers, and he could not prevent her depredations of the more valuable contents of Holland House and the eventual sale of Ampthill; his mother’s inherited Jamaican estates had been made virtually worthless by the abolition of slavery. Their relationship was poisoned by mutual suspicion and dislike until her death in 1845, when Fox got control of property worth about £7,000 a year and received a life annuity of £500. He carried out large-scale alterations and improvements to Holland House, which he financed by mortgages. He made a brief maiden speech in the Lords against the aliens bill, 17 Apr. 1848, but his health was already failing: he lost the sight of one eye and in his last years spent much time abroad.45 He died, ‘after a short but severe illness’, at Naples in December 1859, and was buried there in the chapel erected by his wife, who survived him for almost 31 years. The barony of Holland became extinct. By his will, which was hastily drawn up the day before his death, he left all his property to his wife. His personalty was proved under £50,000 in February 1860.46 His wife had become a Catholic in 1850 and Fox, who in 1841 had publicly denied a report of their conversion to Rome, may have followed suit on his death bed.47

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: David R. Fisher

Notes

• 1. Macaulay Letters, ii. 182, 337, 339.
• 2. Lady Holland to Son, 85; Lady Holland Jnl. ii. 234-5, 244.
• 3. Fox Jnl. 190; Smith Letters, i. 395.
• 4. Smith Letters, i. 257; Add. 51645, Holland to White, 28 Aug. 1815.
• 5. Smith Letters, i. 283.
• 6. Add. 51782, Holland to C.R. Fox, 2 May 1820; Fox Jnl. 35.
• 7. Fox Jnl. 81, 97.
• 8. Ibid. 104, 116.
• 9. Ibid. 135-6, 137, 142-3, 151; Add. 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland, 26 Aug.; 51679, Lord J. Russell to same [Aug.]; 52011, Stuart Wortley to Fox, 16 Aug. [1827].
• 10. Add. 51679, Russell to Lady Holland, 22 Dec. [1822].
• 11. Fox Jnl. 157-67; Lady Holland to Son, 16, 23; Lord Ilchester, Home of the Hollands, 279; Add. 51667, Bedford to Lady Holland, 20 Apr.; 51783, Holland to C.R. Fox, 21 May 1823.
• 12. Add. 51748, Holland to Fox, 28 May 1823.
• 13. Fox Jnl. 173; Ilchester, Chrons. Holland House, 48; Add. 52011, Stuart Wortley to Fox, 2 [13] Oct. [1823].
• 14. Fox Jnl. 190; Add. 51611, Adair to Lady Holland, 15 July [1824].
• 15. Add. 51749, Holland to Fox, 27 Aug. 1824; Fox Jnl. 195-6.
• 16. Add. 51679, Russell to Lady Holland, 4 Oct [1824]; Grey mss, Tierney to Grey, 19 Jan. 1825.
• 17. Add. 51574, Abercromby to Holland [8 Nov.]; 51690, Lansdowne to Lady Holland, 14 Nov. [1824]; Fox Jnl. 196-202.
• 18. Add. 61937, ff. 1, 3, 5.
• 19. Add. 51832, Yarborough to unknown peer, 11 Feb. 1825; Wentworth Woodhouse mun. WWM/F33/64.
• 20. Add. 51749, Holland to Fox [c. 15 Feb.], reply, 5 Mar. 1825.
• 21. Fox Jnl. 205-11; Add. 51784.
• 22. Fox Jnl. 213-17; Lady Holland to Son, 41.
• 23. Add. 61937, ff. 24, 26.
• 24. Add. 52011, Mrs. Fazakerley to Fox, 25, 31 Oct. 1825.
• 25. Fox Jnl. 217-23; Add. 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland, 19 Dec.; 51679, Russell to same, 9 Nov.; 51749, Fox to Holland, 14 Dec.; 52011, Mrs. Fazakerley to Fox, 8, 11 Dec. 1825, 4 Jan. 1826; 61937, ff. 29, 31, 34, 36, 38.
• 26. Add. 51749, Fox to Holland, 15 Jan. [23 Feb.], reply, 28 Jan. 1826.
• 27. Add. 61937, ff. 41, 43; Fox Jnl. 223.
• 28. Add. 51574, Abercromby to Holland, 7 Mar.; 51584, Tierney to same, 12 Mar.; 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland [28 Mar.]; 51679, Russell to same, 26 Mar.; 51749, Holland to Fox, 6 Mar.; 51784, Holland to C.R. Fox, 5, 23 Mar.; 51833, Norfolk to Holland [11 Mar.]; 52057, C.R. to H.E. Fox, 19 Mar. 1826; 61937, ff. 43, 45.
• 29. Fox Jnl. 226; Smith Letters, i. 448; Add. 51584, Tierney to Holland, 4 May; 51586, same to Lady Holland, 16 May; 51663, Bedford to Holland, 9 May; 51668, same to Lady Holland, 23, 27, 31 May; 51749, Holland to Fox [May] 1826; 61937, ff. 47, 49, 51.
• 30. Fox Jnl. 226-30; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 36; Smith Letters, i. 449-50; Add. 51598, Morley to Holland, 25 July, reply, 26 July, Lady Holland to Lady Morley, 26 June, Morley to Lady Holland, 1 July; 51749, Holland to Fox, 23 July, reply [July]; 51784, Holland to C.R. Fox, 27-30 June 1826; 61937, f. 53.
• 31. Add. 51749, Holland to Fox, 3, 4, 6 Oct.; 51833, to Norfolk, 3 Oct., reply, 8 Oct. 1826.
• 32. Add. 51749, Holland to Fox, 30 Oct., 15, 30 Nov., 1, 3 [17] Dec.; 51784, to C.R. Fox, 4, 18 Dec. 1826; 61937, f. 55.
• 33. Add. 51749, Fox to Holland, 25 Dec. 1826; 51750, Holland to Fox, 2, 5, 9 Jan., reply, 19 Jan.; 51833, Norfolk to Holland, 1, 14 Jan. 1827.
• 34. Add. 51750, Holland to Fox, 20, 26 Jan., 2, 5 Feb.; 51833, Robinson to Holland, 5 Feb. 1827.
• 35. Fox Jnl. 231; Lady Holland to Son, 61; Add. 51576, Mrs. Fazakerley to Lady Holland, 17 [Apr.]; 51750, Fox to Holland [c. 20 Feb.], reply, 9 Mar.; 52011, Eleanor Fazakerley to Fox [15 Apr.] 1827; 52447, f. 79.
• 36. Lansdowne mss, Holland to Lansdowne, 22 Oct. 1827; Add. 51834, Dudley to Holland 3 Jan. 1828; Ilchester, Holland House, 97-98; Lady Holland to Son, 67, 73.
• 37. Fox Jnl. 260-330, 343.
• 38. Ibid. 354-78; Ilchester, Holland House, 134.
• 39. Grey mss, Holland to Grey [18 Nov. 1830].
• 40. Add. 51680, Russell to Lady Holland [?3 May]; 51724, Duncannon to Holland [Apr.]; 51836, Stuart to same, 24 Apr. 1831.
• 41. Add. 51663, Bedford to Holland [31 May 1831].
• 42. Holland House Diaries, 18, 20, 49; Lady Holland to Son, 111; Ilchester, Holland House, 148; Countess Granville Letters, ii. 122. Add. 51604, Granville to Holland, 6 Feb.; 51610, Adair to same, 22 May 1832.
• 43. Holland House Diaries, 190, 192, 212; Ilchester, Holland House, 156-9; Creevey Pprs. ii. 268.
• 44. Ilchester, Holland House, 195-200, 219, 223, 248-9, 296, 307, 357, 400-2, 435; Lady Holland to Son, 157, 162-3, 167; Von Neumann Diary, ii. 247.
• 45. Ilchester, Holland House, 284-9, 292, 344-5, 367-71, 373, 376, 418; Lady Holland to Son, 189; Maxwell, Clarendon, i. 230; The Times, 8 Mar. 1841, 30 Mar. 1846.
• 46. Ilchester, Holland House, 419-20; The Times, 27 Feb. 1860.
• 47. Ilchester, Holland House, 299-300; The Times, 25 Oct. 1841. Oxford DNB suggests that a much earlier conversion may have ‘influenced him in his refusal to take his ... seat for Horsham’; but this seems fanciful.