Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland
Quick Facts
Biography
Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland (20 February 1745 – 26 December 1774) of Holland House in Kensington, Middlesex, was a British peer.
Origins
He was the eldest son of Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland (of Foxley (created 1763))(1705–1774) of Holland House, by his wife Lady Caroline Lennox (1723–1774), suo jure 1st Baroness Holland (of Holland (created 1762)), a daughter of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond. Stephen and his younger brother, the great Whig statesman Charles James Fox (1749–1806), were a great trial to their parents because of their gambling and other habits.
Career
He was educated at Eton College. When his father died on 1 July 1774, Stephen inherited his title (Baron Holland, of Foxley (1763)) and then his mother's (Baron Holland, of Holland (1762)) upon her death three weeks later. Stephen Fox himself died only five months later and his titles were inherited by his only son, Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland.
Marriage and progeny
On 20 April 1766 he married Lady Mary FitzPatrick, a daughter of John FitzPatrick, 1st Earl of Upper Ossory, by whom he had two children:
- Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland (1773–1840) of Holland House;
- Hon. Caroline Fox (3 November 1767 – 12 March 1845), of Little Holland House, Kensington, who died unmarried aged 78. In 1842, on a site on her brother's Holland House estate and near her home at Little Holland House, she founded a charity school "for the education of children of the labouring, manufacturing and other poorer classes of Kensington", which survives today, on a new location near by, as Fox Primary School.