STRANGWAYS, Hon. John George Charles Fox (1803-1859), of Abbotsbury, Dorset and Brickworth House, Wilts.

Strangways, third son of his father’s second wife, was born five months after the death of his father from ‘gout in his head’ aged 55.1Gent. Mag. (1802), ii. 885. His well-connected Whig family were lineal descendants of Stephen Fox Strangways, the first earl of Ilchester (1704-1776), whose younger brother Henry, first Baron Holland, was the father of Charles James Fox. Brought up by the dowager countess, Strangways attended Westminster School, ‘but did not reside’, before going to Oxford, where he took his degree in 1824. Part of the inner circle of leading Whig society, whose hostesses included his half-sister Louisa, wife of the grandee Lord Lansdowne, Strangways followed his older brother William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways (a noted diplomat and foreign under-secretary in the second Melbourne ministry) into the foreign office, where he held unspecified clerkships. He joined Brooks’s, sponsored by Lansdowne and his half-brother the 3rd earl of Ilchester, in 1831, was appointed an officer to the privy council in 1833 and subsequently served in the queen dowager’s household.2Morning Post, 13 Sept. 1859. For a typical example of his society appearances see Morning Post, 29 May 1840.

Following the unexpected death of Lansdowne’s son Lord Kerry in August 1836, Strangways was brought forward as a stop-gap in their pocket borough of Calne. ‘So little interest’ was taken in his return, which was uncontested, that ‘no more than a score’ of electors attended.3Hunts. Advertiser, 1 Oct.; The Champion, 2 Oct. 1836. At the 1837 general election the following year he transferred to Dorsetshire in place of the retiring Member William Ponsonby, another Whig kinsman, and was again returned unopposed.4Examiner, 9 July 1837.

Strangways was termed a ‘Whig-Radical’ on his retirement in 1841, but his only known vote of that tendency was in the minority to abolish the property qualification for MPs, 14 Feb. 1837.5Morning Post, 28 June 1841. He divided against the ballot, 7 Mar. 1837, 15 Feb. 1838, was one of 51 Liberals notably ‘absent’ from the division on the issue in June 1839, and voted against considering the Chartist petition, 12 July 1839.6Freeman’s Journal, 22 June 1839. A lax attender, who is not known to have spoken in debate, he rarely managed to cast more than 20 votes in any session. However, he was present to support ministers on most major issues, including in the important divisions on the abolition of church rates, 15 Mar. 1837, Irish municipal reform, 10 Apr. 1837, and the reform of Irish tithes, 9 June 1837, 15 May 1838. He also steadily backed their policy towards Canada and Jamaica and voted consistently against altering the corn laws. He was balloted on to the Youghal election committee, 22 Feb. 1838.7Preston Chronicle, 3 Mar. 1838. In his last known vote, he rallied behind ministers in the no confidence motion which brought them down, 4 June 1841. At the ensuing general election he retired from Dorset without explanation. He is not known to have sought a seat elsewhere.8Morning Post, 28 June 1841.

Strangways died at Brickworth after ‘a short illness’ in September 1859, having become heir apparent to the earldom the previous year on his older brother William’s succession as 4^th earl. Following the latter’s demise in 1865, Strangways’s eldest son and heir Henry Edward Fox Strangways (1847-1905) succeeded to the earldom and family estates.9Morning Post, 12 Sept. 1859.