Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/129

 January 1755 fresh negotiations were opened with Fox, which this time proved successful, though the terms offered him were not so favourable as on the last occasion. Fox, having consented in future to act under Robinson, and to give the king's measures his active support in the House of Commons, was admitted to the cabinet, and his temporary alliance with Pitt was thereupon dissolved. Though Fox suffered in reputation by his desertion of Pitt and his subservience to Newcastle, he speedily gained his object, and before the year was out was leader of the House of Commons. Robinson, receiving a pension, was reappointed master of the great wardrobe, and Fox was appointed in his place secretary of state on 25 Nov. 1755. Thinking himself ill-used both by the king and Newcastle, and suspecting that the latter was intriguing to cast the loss of Minorca upon his shoulders, Fox obtained the king's permission to resign in October 1756. Newcastle's resignation soon followed. The king then sent for Fox and directed him to form an administration with Pitt, but the latter refused to act with him; and the Duke of Devonshire thereupon formed an administration with Pitt's help and without Fox. During the ministerial interregnum in 1757 Fox, at the request of the king, who was incensed at Newcastle's refusal to act with Pitt, consented to become chancellor of the exchequer, with Lord Waldegrave as first lord of the treasury. At the last moment, however, the king yielded to Newcastle, and Fox accepted the subordinate post of paymaster-general without a seat in the cabinet. In this office, which during the continuance of the war was probably the most lucrative one in the government, Fox contented himself with amassing a large fortune, and took but little part in the debates. Upon Grenville's resignation of the seals of secretary of state in October 1762, Fox, with considerable reluctance, once more accepted the leadership of the House of Commons. Refusing to become secretary of state on the ground of bad health, he was admitted to Bute's cabinet, and while retaining the post of paymaster-general accepted the sinecure office of writer of the tallies and clerk of the pells in Ireland. Fox had assured the king that parliament should approve of the peace by large majorities, and by the employment of the grossest bribery and intimidation he kept his word. Having broken with all his old political friends, he turned upon them with relentless fury. ‘Strip the Duke of Newcastle of his three lieutenancies immediately,’ wrote Fox to Bute, in November 1762; ‘I'll answer for the good effect of it, and then go on to the general rout, but let this beginning be made immediately.’ In the following month he wrote again to Bute in the same strain: ‘The impertinence of our conquered enemies last night was great, but will not continue so if his majesty shows no lenity. But, my lord, with regard to their numerous dependents in crown employments, it behoves your lordship in particular to leave none of them. … And I don't care how much I am hated if I can say to myself, I did his majesty such honest and essential service’ (Life of the Earl of Shelburne, i. 179–80). The peace of Paris was signed in 1763, and Fox having accomplished his task took but little further trouble about the business of the ministry in the House of Commons. Ill supported by his colleagues and hated on all sides, Fox became anxious to retire from the house, and, claiming his reward for his apostasy, was created Baron Holland of Foxley, Wiltshire, on 16 April 1763. After a long altercation with Bute and Shelburne, which is fully recorded in the ‘Life’ of the latter (i. 199–229), Fox managed to retain the post of paymaster. Shelburne, who had acted as Bute's agent in the negotiations with Fox in the previous year, was denounced by him as ‘a perfidious and infamous liar.’ But the familiar tradition that Bute attempted to justify Shelburne's conduct by telling Fox that the whole affair was a ‘pious fraud,’ and that Fox replied, ‘I can see the fraud plainly enough, but where is the piety?’ is stated by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice to be ‘valueless for the purposes of history’ (ib. p. 228). On leaving the House of Commons Fox practically retired from public life, and it does not appear that he took any part in the debates of the upper house. In May 1765 he was forced to resign the post of paymaster-general, which was conferred upon Charles Townshend (Cal. of Home Office Papers, 1760–5, p. 553). On Grenville's fall he made some advances towards a reconciliation with his old friends, which were scornfully rejected by Rockingham. In 1769 the lord mayor presented the king with a petition from the livery of the city of London against his ministers, in which Fox was referred to as ‘the public defaulter of unaccounted millions’ (Annual Reg. 1769, p. 202). Proceedings against Fox had been actually commenced in the court of exchequer, but had been stayed by a warrant from the crown. After some correspondence with Beckford, Fox published a statement clearly proving that the delay which had occurred in making up the accounts of his office was neither illegal nor unusual in those days. It has, however,