Holland

Holland, LORD. HENRY RICHARD VASSALL FOX, third Baron Holland, F.R.S., was born at Winterslow House, Wilts, in 1773, and succeeded to the title on the death of his father, the second baron, in 1774. He went to Eton, and thence to Christ Church. He was trained for public life by his celebrated uncle, Charles James Fox, after whose death he held the post of Lord Privy Seal in the Grenville ministry for a few months. He then shared the long banishment of the Whigs from the councils of their sovereign. During this long and dreary interval Holland, to use the language of Macaulay, was the 'constant protector of all oppressed races and persecuted sects.' He held unpopular opinions on the war with France; strove zealously to mitigate the severity of the criminal code; made war on the slave-trade; threw his heart into the struggle against the Corn Laws; and, although an aristocrat, laboured to extend the liberties of the subject. In 1830 he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and a member of the reform cabinet of Earl Grey, and these posts he also held in the Melbourne ministry. He died at Holland House, Kensington, October 22, 1840. He wrote biographies of Guillen de Castro and Lope de Vega, translated Spanish comedies, prepared a life of his uncle, and edited the memoirs of Lord Waldegrave.—His wife, ELIZABETH VASSALL (1770-1845), daughter of a wealthy Jamaica planter, married in 1786 Sir Godfrey Webster; but the marriage was dissolved in 1797 for her adultery with Lord Holland, who immediately married her. She was distinguished for beauty, conversational gifts, and autocratic ways; and till the end of her life her house was a meeting-place for brilliant wits and distinguished statesmen.—Their son, the fourth Lord Holland (1802-59), edited two works by his father, Foreign Reminiscences (1850) and Memoirs of the Whig Party (1854). See the Princess Marie Lichtenstein's Holland House (1873).