Henry Fox, 4th Baron Holland

Henry Edward Fox, 4th Baron Holland of Holland, 4th Baron Holland of Foxley (7 May 1802 – 18 December 1859) was briefly a British Whig politician and later an ambassador.

Early life

Fox was born at Holland House, London, the eldest legitimate child of the 3rd Baron Holland and his wife, Elizabeth Vassall, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford.

Career Selections from the entertaining journal, Fox kept from 1818 to 1830 were published in 1923, edited by his cousin and eventual heir Lord Ilchester (The Journal of the Hon. Henry Edward Fox). In it, he records his life in British high society and his travels, his encounters with such notables as Talleyrand, Samuel Rodgers, Sydney Smith and Lord Byron (and Byron's mistress, Teresa Guiccioli, with whom Fox had an affair which he recounts in some detail).

Fox briefly held the seat of Horsham from 1826 to 1827 before joining the Diplomatic Service in 1831, after which he was Secretary to the Legation at Turin from 1832 to 1835, Attaché at St Petersburg, Secretary at the Embassy in Vienna from 1835 1838, to the German Confederation in 1838, and to Florence from 1839 to 1846. Stillborn son (10 October 1838). A son (born and died 7 March 1842). Stillborn daughter (8 August 1844).

Adopted daughter Unable to have surviving offspring, they adopted a 3 month old girl born in France, Marie Fox, When she was three months old, she was found by a physician called Dr. Séguin, who arranged for her to be adopted by Henry Edward Fox, 4th Baron Holland, and his wife, the former Lady Mary Augusta Coventry. Lord and Lady Holland had no biological children of their own, having gone through two stillbirths Her biological paternity remains a mystery; one rumour had it that she was her adoptive father's biological daughter born by his servant. She wrote a two-volume history of Holland House, published in 1874.

As Lord Holland died without male issue, in Naples, his titles became extinct.