Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland

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Canting arms of Fox, Baron Holland: Ermine, on a chevron azure three fox's heads and necks erased or on a canton of the second a fleur-de-lys of the third

Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland (20 February 1745 – 26 December 1774) of Holland House in Kensington, Middlesex, was a British peer.

Origins

He was the eldest son of Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland (of Foxley (created 1763))(1705–1774) of Holland House, by his wife Lady Caroline Lennox (1723–1774), suo jure 1st Baroness Holland (of Holland (created 1762)), a daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond. Stephen and his younger brother, the great Whig statesman Charles James Fox (1749–1806), were a great trial to their parents because of their gambling and other habits.

Career

He was educated at Eton College. When his father died on 1 July 1774, Stephen inherited his title (Baron Holland, of Foxley (1763)) and then his mother's (Baron Holland, of Holland (1762)) upon her death three weeks later. Stephen Fox himself died only five months later and his titles were inherited by his only son, Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland.

Marriage and progeny

"Honble Miss Fox", 1810 portrait by James Northcote (1746–1831) of Hon. Caroline Fox (1767–1845), then aged 43, only daughter of Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland. Collection of Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, Devon

On 20 April 1766 he married Lady Mary FitzPatrick, a daughter of John FitzPatrick, 1st Earl of Upper Ossory, by whom he had two children:

  • Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland (1773–1840) of Holland House;
  • Hon. Caroline Fox (3 November 1767[1] – 12 March 1845[2]), of Little Holland House, Kensington, who died unmarried aged 78. In 1842, on a site on her brother's Holland House estate and near her home at Little Holland House, she founded a charity school "for the education of children of the labouring, manufacturing and other poorer classes of Kensington",[3] which survives today, on a new location near by, as Fox Primary School.

References

  1. ^ Date of birth "3 Nov 1767" per Christie, Ian, R., The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 3: January 1781 to October 1788, 2017 (first published 1971), p. 95, footnote 8 [1]. Her approximate year of birth is given in a contemporary letter from Jeremy Bentham to George Wilson, dated 24 Sept 1781: "Miss Fox is a little girl between 13 and 14, a sister, and the only one, of the present Lord Holland who is about 9, consequently niece to Charles Fox and to Lady Shelburne and great-niece to the Duchess of Bedford" (Christie, p. 95)
  2. ^ For the date of her death see: The Spectator, 15 March 1845, p. 253 [2] "On the 12th (March 1845) at Little Holland House, Kensington, the Hon. Caroline Fox, niece of Charles James Fox and sister of the late Lord Holland"
  3. ^ 'The Holland estate: Since 1874', in Survey of London: Volume 37, Northern Kensington, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1973), pp. 126–150, quoting source "Endowed Charities (London), vol. iv, 1901, pp. 471–2; M. L. R. 1841/3/832."[3]
Parliament of Great Britain
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Salisbury
1768–1774
With: Hon. Edward Bouverie 1768–1771
Viscount Folkestone 1771–1774
Succeeded by
Peerage of Great Britain
Preceded by Baron Holland
(of Foxley)
1774
Succeeded by
Preceded by Baron Holland
(of Holland)
1774