Holland, Henry Richard Vassall Fox, 3rd Baron

▪ British politician

born November 21, 1773, Winterslow, Wiltshire, England

died October 22, 1840, London

      British Whig politician, associate of the party leader and reorganizer Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, and nephew and disciple of the statesman Charles James Fox, whose libertarian political ideas he expounded in the House of Lords.

      He was the son of Stephen Fox, who had inherited both the barony of Holland of Foxley from his father and the barony of Holland of Holland from his mother. He was soon orphaned, his father dying in 1774 and his mother in 1778.

      In October 1806, shortly after his uncle's death, Holland became lord privy seal in Lord Grenville's coalition “Ministry of All the Talents,” helping to secure the abolition of the slave trade in the British colonies and leaving office with the rest of the Cabinet in March 1807.

      In 1812 Holland declined Grey's offer of the Whig opposition leadership. The Whigs who joined the Canning and Goderich ministries in 1827 wanted him to be foreign secretary, but King George IV refused to admit another Whig to the Cabinet. In November 1830 he was appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in Grey's reform ministry, and, except for the brief period of Sir Robert Peel's first ministry (November 1834–April 1835), he held that office until his death.

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