Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/137

Fox was strongly attached, were his only trouble. On her death, 19 Dec. 1762, he lost heart. He died on 25 Oct. (according to Hazlitt 22 Oct.) 1763, aged 70. A daughter, Mary (b 26 Dec. 1725), married John Cleather, 3 Sept. 1747.

It was some time after 1744 that Fox penned his own very entertaining ‘Memoirs’ and the ‘Characters’ of some of his contemporaries. They throw much light on dissenting history. Fox writes with great freedom and pungency, and his estimates of men are valuable, though sometimes hasty, and always coloured by his dislikes, and by his contempt for the surroundings of his early life. In 1814 some use was made of the ‘Characters’ by Toulmin, to whom the manuscript had been lent by Fox's grandson, George Cleather of Stonehouse, near Plymouth; Toulmin had evidently not seen the ‘Memoirs.’ In 1821 the ‘Memoirs’ and nine ‘Characters’ were published in the ‘Monthly Repository,’ with nine letters from Secker to Fox, one from Fox to Secker, and two from Chandler to Fox. Notes were added by John Towill Rutt. The editor, Robert Aspland [q. v.], speaks of the manuscripts as having come into his possession through a descendant of Fox. Aspland thought of reprinting the papers, and promised to deposit the originals in Dr. Williams's Library; unfortunately neither intention was carried out. In 1822 an additional letter from Fox to Secker was supplied by Clifford, of the Theatre Royal, Norwich, who reported that he possessed other memoirs by Fox. Northcote's transcript of Fox's papers (containing some addition to the ‘Memoirs’) is now in the public library at Plymouth.

Monthly Repository, 1821, p. 128 sq., 1822, p. 219 sq.; Toulmin's Hist. View, 1814, p. 568 sq.; Worth's Hist. Nonconf. in Plymouth, 1876, p. 16; Northcote's Conversations (Hazlitt), 1881, p. 287 sq.; MS. Minutes of Exeter Assembly, 1691–1717, in Dr. Williams's Library; Northcote's MS. Worthies of Devon in Plymouth Libr.]  FOX, LUKE (1586–1635), navigator, son of Richard Fox, seaman and assistant of the Trinity House at Kingston-upon-Hull, was born at Hull 20 Oct. 1586. 'Having been sea-bred from his boystime,' he acquired his knowledge of seamanship in voyages southward to France, Spain, and the Mediterranean, and northward to the Baltic, Denmark, and Norway, varied by 'imployments along the coasts' of England and crossing the North Sea. In 1606 he offered his services as mate to John Knight in that able seaman's last and fatal voyage to Greenland, but was rejected by the promoters on account of his youth. Henceforth the whole of his thoughts were devoted to Arctic exploration, but more particularly to the north-west passage. He writes: 'At the returnes home of all ships from thence I enquired of the masters, mates, and others that were that way imployed, whereby I gathered from reports and discourse and manuscripts how farre they had proceeded.' If we except Captain Hawkridge's abortive voyage of 1619, Fox was the true successor of Bylot and Baffin (1615) in Arctic exploration. Earlier voyages had been made by Sir Thomas Button [q. v.] in 1612, by Henry Hudson [q. v.] in 1606, by Captain Weymouth in 1585-7.

Fox's earliest patron was the famous mathematician, Henry Briggs [q. v.], also a Yorkshireman, and professor of geometry at Oxford. He, with the assistance of his friend, Sir J. Brooke, was the first to direct the royal attention to Fox's voyage. The project first took shape in 1629, in a 'Petition of Luke Fox to the king for a small supply of money towards the discovery of a passage by the north-west to the South Sea, Hudson and Sir Thomas Button having discovered a great way, and given great hopes of opening the rest' (State Papers, p. 105). In reply to this a pinnace of the royal navy of seventy tons was placed at the disposal of the adventurers, but the setting forth was deferred until the following year. In the interval Briggs died; half the adventurers having fallen away, the voyage would have been abandoned but for the news that the Bristol merchants had projected a similar voyage from their port. Their rival scheme was the well-known voyage of Captain Thomas James [q. v.], which left Bristol 3 May 1631. This news caused a spirit of emulation among the London merchants, which, with the assistance of Sir T. Roe and Sir J. Wolstenholme, resulted in the setting forth of Fox in the Charles pinnace with a crew of twenty men and two boys victualled for eighteen months. Fox sailed from the Pool below London Bridge 30 April 1631 (MS. Journal, f. 23). He anchored off Whitby, where he landed, and reached Kirkwall in the Orkneys 19 May. Sailing thence due west on the sixty parallel he made land 20 June on the north side of Frobisher Bay; two days later he sighted Cape Chidley, off the south shore of Hudson's Strait, six leagues distant. Passing Resolution Island two leagues south on 23 June, his crew saw in the harbour on the west side the smoke of the camp-fire of Captain James, who had put in there for repairs. From this date until 11 July Fox worked his way along the north shore of Hudson's Strait until he reached a position between Mill and 