Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/121

 by the support which he gave to Alexander Alane [see ], on the occasion when the young reformer pleaded his own cause before convocation. The whole of Fox's remarkable speech is printed in the 8th book of Foxe's ‘Acts and Monuments;’ it contains, among other noteworthy utterances, an explicit declaration, that ‘the lay people do now know the Holy Scriptures better than most of us.’ In the same year Martin Bucer dedicated to him the edition of his ‘Commentaries on the Gospels’ printed at Basle.

Fox died in London 8 May 1538, and was buried in the church of St. Mary Mounthaw there. His will, dated on the day of his death, was proved 20 March 1538–9. Some of his sayings have become proverbial. ‘The surest way to peace is a constant preparedness for war.’ ‘Oft was this saying in our bishop's mouth,’ says Lloyd, ‘before ever it was in Philip the Second's—“Time and I will challenge any two in the world”’ (State Worthies, ed. 1670, pp. 88–9).

Fox's chief work was the ‘De vera Differentia’ above mentioned, which his warm friend and admirer, Henry Stafford, only son of Edward, duke of Buckingham, translated into English (8vo, 1548). He appears to have been the joint author, along with Stokesley, bishop of London, and Dr. Nicolas, of a volume ‘afterwards translated into English, with additions and changes, by my lord of Canterbury,’ entitled ‘The Determinations of the most famous and mooste excellent universities of Italy and Fraunce, that it is so unleful for a man to marie his brothers wyfe, that the pope hath no power to dispence therewith,’ London, 8vo, 1531.

[Letters and Papers of the Reign of Hen. VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses, vol. i.; manuscript notes to Baker's copy of the De vera Differentia in St. John's College Library, A. 3, 36; Pocock's Records of the Reformation; Lloyd's State Worthies; Lelandi Encomia.] 

FOX, ELIZABETH VASSALL, (1770–1845), daughter of Richard Vassall of Jamaica, was born in 1770, and was married on 27 June 1786 to Sir Godfrey Webster, bart., of Battle Abbey, Sussex. The marriage was dissolved on 3 July 1797 on the ground of adultery committed by her with Henry Richard [q. v.], third baron Holland, to whom she was married at Rickmansworth three days afterwards. Lord Holland had just restored Holland House, and there he gathered round him that brilliant circle of statesmen, wits, men of letters, and other people of distinction, which gave the house a European celebrity. Lady Holland possessed a remarkable power of making her guests display themselves to the best advantage. Traits in her character that were by no means attractive rendered her power of fascination the more extraordinary. Cyrus Redding says of her: ‘Polite, cold, haughty to those she met first in social intercourse, she was offensive to those to whom she took a dislike,’ adding, as an instance, that Campbell having jestingly taken her to task for using the expression ‘take a drive,’ she treated him ‘with an hauteur to which he would not again expose himself’ (Fifty Years' Recollections. iii. 176–8). ‘Elle est toute assertion,’ said Talleyrand, ‘mais quand on demande la preuve, c'est là son secret’ (, Journal, i. 300). Moore tells how on one occasion she asked him how he could write those ‘vulgar verses’ about Hunt, and on another occasion attacked his ‘Life of Sheridan’ as ‘quite a romance’ showing a ‘want of taste and judgment.’ To ‘Lalla Rookh’ she objected, ‘in the first place because it was eastern, and in the second place because it was in quarto.’ ‘Poets,’ says Moore, ‘inclined to a plethora of vanity would find a dose of Lady Holland now and then very good for their complaint.’ To Lord Porchester she once said: ‘I am sorry to hear you are going to publish a poem. Can't you suppress it?’ ‘Your poetry,’ she said to Rogers, ‘is bad enough, so pray be sparing of your prose.’ To Matthew Gregory (better known as Monk) Lewis, complaining that in ‘Rejected Addresses’ he was made to write burlesque, which he never did, she replied, ‘You don't know your own talent’ (, Diary, Russell, ii. 328, v. 262, vi. 41; Quarterly Review, cxxv. 427). Byron, supposing that she had prompted the article on ‘Hours of Idleness’ in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ satirised her in ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,’ but afterwards made reparation by dedicating the ‘Bride of Abydos’ to her husband. In Ticknor, the historian of Spanish literature, she met her match. Referring to New England she told him that she understood the colony had originally been a convict settlement, to which Ticknor answered that he was not aware of the fact, but that in the King's Chapel, Boston, was a monument to one of the Vassalls, some of whom had been among the early settlers of Massachusetts (Life of Ticknor, i. 264 n.) She kept a tight rein on her guests when they seemed inclined to monopolise the conversation. Macaulay once descanting at large on Sir Thomas Munro, she told him brusquely she had had enough of the subject and would have no more. The conversation then turned on the Christian Fathers, and Macaulay was copious on Chrysostom and Athanasius till Lady Holland abruptly turned to him with, ‘Pray, Macaulay, what