Editing Charles James Fox (section)

==Early life: 1749–1758==
Fox was born in London on 24 January 1749, the second surviving son of [[Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland]], and Lady [[Caroline Lennox]], a daughter of [[Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond]].<ref>{{harvnb|Reid|1969|pp=7–9}}</ref> Henry Fox (1705–1774) was an ally of [[Robert Walpole]] and rival of [[Pitt the Elder]], and had amassed a considerable fortune by exploiting his position as [[Paymaster of the Forces|Paymaster General of the Forces]]. Charles James Fox's elder brother [[Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland|Stephen]] (1745–1774) became the 2nd Baron Holland, and his younger brother [[Henry Edward Fox|Henry]] (1755–1811) had a distinguished military career.<ref name="MI">{{harvnb|Mitchell|2007}}</ref>

Fox was the darling of his father, who found Charles "infinitely engaging & clever & pretty" and, from the time that his son was three years old, apparently preferred his company at meals to that of anyone else.<ref>{{harvnb|Mitchell|1992|p=4}}</ref> The stories of Charles's over-indulgence by his doting father are legendary. It was said that Charles once expressed a great desire to break his father's watch and was not restrained or punished when he duly smashed it on the floor. On another occasion, when Henry had promised his son that he could watch the demolition of a wall on his estate and found that it had already been destroyed, he ordered the workmen to rebuild the wall and demolish it again, with Charles watching.<ref>{{harvnb|Reid|1969|p=10}}</ref>

[[File:CharlesJamesFox ByJoshuaReynolds.png|thumb|Mezzotint, ''Ladies Sarah Lennox and Susan Strangeways, with Charles James Fox'' (1762) at Holland House; after the original by Sir [[Joshua Reynolds]], British Museum. Fox stands beside his first cousin Lady Susan Fox-Strangways (1743–1827), who holds a pigeon, while his aunt [[Lady Sarah Lennox]] (1745–1826) (his mother's youngest sister) leans out of a window above. In 1760, whilst at [[Eton College]], Fox had developed a schoolboy crush on Susan and composed a prize-winning Latin verse describing a pigeon he found to deliver his love-letters to her "to please both Venus its mistress and him".<ref>Lascelles, Edward, ''The Life of Charles James Fox'', London, 1936, p. 11</ref>]]
Given ''carte blanche'' to choose his own education, Fox in 1758 attended a fashionable [[Wandsworth]] school run by a Monsieur Pampellonne, followed by [[Eton College]], where he began to develop his lifelong love of [[classics|classical literature]]. In later life he was said to have always carried a copy of [[Horace]] in his coat pocket. He was taken out of school by his father in 1761 to attend the coronation of [[George III]], who would become one of his most bitter enemies, and once more in 1763 to travel to [[the Continent]] (where he visited Paris and [[Spa, Belgium|Spa]]). On this trip Charles was given a substantial amount of money with which to learn to gamble by his father, who also arranged for him to lose his virginity, aged fourteen, to a Madame de Quallens.<ref name="MI"/> Fox returned to Eton later that year, "attired in red-heeled shoes and Paris cut-velvet, adorned with a pigeon-wing hair style tinted with blue powder, and a newly acquired French accent", and was duly flogged by [[Edward Barnard (provost)|Dr. Barnard]], the headmaster.<ref>{{harvnb|Reid|1969|p=16}}</ref> Charles Fox was once known as a [[Macaroni (fashion)|macaroni]], despite him being a tad too overweight to look decent in his tight clothing.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.eastleach.org/macaronis-dandies-macaroni-downs-eastleach/ |title=The Macaronis and Dandies of Macaroni Downs |access-date=1 February 2021 |archive-date=26 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220526102613/https://www.eastleach.org/macaronis-dandies-macaroni-downs-eastleach/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> These three pursuits – gambling, womanising and the love of things and fashions foreign – would become, once inculcated in his adolescence, notorious habits of Fox's later life.

Fox entered [[Hertford College, Oxford]], in October 1764. His tutor there was [[William Newcome]]. By the standards of aristocratic students, he worked hard while at Oxford, especially at mathematics.<ref name="Trevelyan">{{harvnb|Trevelyan|1880|pp=50–51}}</ref> However, he was rather contemptuous of Oxford's "nonsenses".<ref>{{harvnb|Mitchell|1992|p=8}}</ref> He left without graduating in spring 1766, to tour Europe with his family.<ref name="Trevelyan"/> He went on several further expeditions to Europe, becoming well known in the great Parisian salons, meeting influential figures such as [[Voltaire]], [[Jean-Jaques Rousseau]], [[David Hume]], [[Edward Gibbon]], the [[Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans|duc d'Orléans]] and the [[Marquis de Lafayette]], and becoming the co-owner of a number of racehorses with the [[Armand Louis de Gontaut|duc de Lauzun]].<ref name="MI"/>