William Fox (attorney)

William Fox, attorney (fl. 1796-1813) identified himself on his title pages as an ‘Attorney at Law; a Master in the High Court of Chancery; a Governor of the Gloucester Infirmary; a Freeman by honorary presentation of that city; a Freeman by the like title and by birth of the city of London; a Freeman by honorary presentation and by birth of the Worshipful Company of Grocers; a Governor of the Philanthropic Institution; and one of their Majesties own loyal London Lambeth Naval Volunteers’ (see A Sailor’s Manual of Prayer [1813]). Unfortunately, he has received credit for all the works by William Fox, bookseller (see below). William Fox the attorney authored four works between 1796 and 1813: The Friend: A Weekly Essay (1796), Remarks on various agricultural reports.  Transmitted to the Honourable Board of Agriculture, in the year 1794 (1796), A sailor’s manual of prayer (1813), and Protestant thoughts on Catholic claims (1813). A cursory reading of the attorney’s works reveals that he was a devout Anglican, a loyal supporter of the King and the Pitt administration in the 1790s (including the war with France), and an outspoken opponent of political reform. His ideas concerning the relationship of the state and the people are extremely hierarchical, reflecting primarily the views of Burke and the numerous anti-reform pamphlets distributed by the Church and King Associations between 1792 and 1796.  His views on the French Revolution and its aftermath are likewise derived from the same sources. Thus, his notion of ‘liberty’, as described in The Friend, is grounded upon the power of monarchy and the privilege of class distinctions, ‘is only perfect when she fosters subordination’ and can ‘flourish’ only  ‘under royalty’ (p.  173).  Consequently, reformers ‘who declaim against power’, like William Fox and Martha Gurney, should ‘examine candidly their own hearts, and they will find that they are governed by the most servile slavery and not by noble liberty.  Indolence and dissipation influence them to discontent, they bid brightness begone because they have not purity enough to view and admire it, and they wish to bring down those that are elevated to honour, because they want industry and honesty to raise themselves to equal eminence’ (173-74).   Fox the attorney is thankful to live under what he believes is the purest form of government, ‘A form wherein we behold monarchy without tyranny, and liberty without licentiousness’ (175). A cursory examination of the publications of William Fox the attorney, when placed alongside the pamphlets of William Fox the bookseller, clearly reveals the gulf that separated the politics and religion of the conservative Tory from that of the politically radical Dissenter. The works of William Fox the bookseller and William Fox the attorney, besides their religious and political differences, can be differentiated sociologically as well by an examination of the printers and booksellers each used and the quality of their publications.  Unlike the three-penny pamphlets produced by Martha Gurney, all four of the attorney’s publications were handsomely bound, expensively priced, and sold by the some of London’s leading booksellers, many of whom had ministerial connections, such as G. Nicoll and Sons, Pall Mall, booksellers to King George III; J. Debrett; J. Scott of Westminster; the Philanthropic Society, St. George’s Fields; and Benjamin White and Son, Fleet-Street. Most libraries and databases have added ‘fl. 1791-1813’ to Fox’s appellation, which has brought two other William Fox’s into play, the well-known Baptist merchant and philanthropist, William Fox (1736-1826), for many years a deacon at Little Prescot Street, Goodman’s Fields, and founder of the Sunday School Society in 1785, and his son, William Fox, Jr. (see their entries in the Index).  For more on this and three other Williams Foxes living in London at the same time, see Timothy Whelan,  “William Fox, Martha Gurney, and Radical Discourse of the 1790s,”  Eighteenth-Century Studies 42 (2009), 397-411.