William Johnson Fox

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William Johnson Fox by his daughter Eliza Bridell Fox

William Johnson Fox (1 March 1786 – 3 June 1864) was an English religious and political orator.

Early life

Fox was born at Uggeshall Farm, Wrentham, near Southwold, Suffolk on 1 March 1786. His parents were strict Calvinists. When he was still young, his father dropped out of farming, and after time at a chapel school, Fox became a weaver's boy, an errand-boy, and in 1799 clerk in a bank. An autodidact, he entered prize competitions.

From September 1806 Fox trained for the Independent ministry, at Homerton College. His tutor there was John Pye Smith, the Congregational theologian. Early in 1810 he took charge of a congregation at Fareham in Hampshire. Within two years he had become minister of the Unitarian chapel at Chichester, after failing to make a small seceding congregation at Fareham viable.

South Place Chapel circle

In 1817 Fox moved to London, becoming minister of Parliament Court Chapel. In 1824 he moved the congregation to South Place Chapel, in Finsbury on the edge of the City of London; the chapel had been built especially for him in South Place. Around Fox and the chapel gathered progressive thinkers. In particular there was an associated group of feminists, and a link to Chartism through William Lovett. The circle included Sophia Dobson Collet, who saw some of Fox's sermons into print; Mary Leman Gillies, who wrote on women's rights; and Caroline Ashurst Stansfeld, married to James Stansfeld by Fox.

A scandal in Fox's personal life broke in 1834 and 1835; it led to a secession from the Chapel, Fox's resignation from the Unitarian ministry, and a new household for him in the Craven Hill area of Bayswater. He-re-established himself as a preacher of rationalism. Charles Hardwick grouped Fox with Theodore Parker and Robert William Mackay as proponents of "absolute religion". Later the chapel was better known as the South Place Ethical Society.

Politician

As a supporter of the Anti-Corn-Law movement, Fox won celebrity as an impassioned orator and journalist, and from 1847 to 1862 he intermittently represented Oldham in Parliament as a Liberal.

Fox died 3 June 1864, in London.

Works

He was editor of the Monthly Repository, and a frequent contributor to the Westminster Review, and published works on political and religious topics. An edition of his Works was edited by William Ballantyne Hodgson and Henry James Slack, and appeared from 1865.

Reputation

The ambition of Fox was to become a great political orator and debater, in which at last he succeeded. His mental agility was manifest in his reply to an elector whom he had canvassed for a vote, and who offered him a halter [an old euphemism for noose] instead. "Oh thank you," said Fox, "I would not deprive you of what is evidently a family relic." His method was to take each argument of an opponent, and dispose of it in regular order. His passion was for argument, upon great or petty subjects. He availed himself of every opportunity to speak. "During five whole sessions," he said, "I spoke every night but one; and I regret that I did not speak on that night, too." - Successful Methods of Public Speaking, 1920

Family

Fox was a friend of radical journalist Benjamin Flower. On Flower's death in 1829, his two daughters, Eliza Flower and Sarah Fuller Flower Adams, became Fox's wards. Fox separated from his wife in the 1830s, and, causing much scandal, apparently set up home with Eliza Flower and his children. Following the separation from his wife, Fox brought up his ward himself, living first in Stamford Hill and later Bayswater. One of Fox's daughters, also named Eliza, married Frederick Lee Bridell; both were accomplished artists.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by William Johnson Fox

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Fielden and William Augustus Johnson	Member of Parliament for Oldham 1847–1852 With: John Duncuft	Succeeded by John Duncuft and John Morgan Cobbett
Preceded by John Duncuft and John Morgan Cobbett	Member of Parliament for Oldham 1852–1857 With: John Morgan Cobbett	Succeeded by James Platt and John Morgan Cobbett
Preceded by James Platt and John Morgan Cobbett	Member of Parliament for Oldham 1857–1862 With: John Morgan Cobbett	Succeeded by James Platt and John Tomlinson Hibbert