Henry Fox, Lord Holland, found his boy, Charles James, brilliant and lively, made him a companion, and indulged him to the utmost.  Once he expressed a strong desire to break a watch that his father was winding up:  his father gave it him to dash upon the floor.  Once his father had promised that when an old garden wall at Holland House was blown down with gunpowder before replacing it with iron railings, he should see the explosion.  The workmen blew it down in the boy’s absence:  his father had the wall rebuilt in its old form that it might be blown down again in his presence, and his promise kept.  He was sent first to Westminster School, and then to Eton.  At home he was his father’s companion, joined in the talk of men at his father’s dinner-parties, travelled at fourteen with his father to the Continent, and is said to have been allowed five guineas a night for gambling-money.  He grew up reckless of the worth of money, and for many years the excitement of gambling was to him as one of the necessaries of life.  His immense energy at school and college made him work as hard as the most diligent man who did nothing else, and devote himself to gambling, horse-racing, and convivial pleasures as vigorously as if he were the weak man capable of nothing else.  The Eton boys all prophesied his future fame.  At Oxford, where he entered Hertford College, he was one of the best men of his time, and one of the wildest.  A clergyman, strong in Greek, was arguing with young Fox against the genuineness of a verse of the Iliad because its measure was unusual.  Fox at once quoted from memory some twenty parallels.

From college he went on the usual tour of Europe, spending lavishly, incurring heavy debts, and sending home large bills for his father to pay.  One bill alone, paid by his father to a creditor at Naples, was for sixteen thousand pounds.  He came back in raiment of the highest fashion, and was put into Parliament in 1768, not yet twenty years old, as member for Midhurst.  He began his political life with the family opinions, defended the Ministry against John Wilkes, and was provided promptly with a place as Paymaster of the Pensions to the Widows of Land Officers, and then, when he had reached the age of twenty-one, there was a seat found for him at the Board of Admiralty.

At once Fox made his mark in the House as a brilliant debater with an intellectual power and an industry that made him master of the subjects he discussed.  Still also he was scattering money, and incurring debt, training race-horses, and staking heavily at gambling tables.  When a noble friend, who was not a gambler, offered to bet fifty pounds upon a throw, Fox declined, saying, “I never play for pence.”