gister, xxv. 279). Fox, however, was enabled to take his seat, as he was returned for Kirkwall. On 8 June he spoke on the subject of the scrutiny, arguing that by Grenville's act such questions should not be decided by votes of the house, and that the bailiff had acted on insufficient evidence and had no right to grant a scrutiny to be continued after the writ became returnable (Speeches, ii. 451). A struggle on this matter was kept up during two sessions. At last it became evident that there was no chance of unseating Fox, and on 3 March 1785 the high bailiff was ordered to make his return, and Hood and Fox were declared duly elected. All the expenses of the election were paid by Fox's political friends. He was in great difficulties; all his effects were seized, and he was forced to leave his lodgings in St. James's. Shortly before this time he had formed a connection with Elizabeth Bridget Cane, otherwise Armistead or Armstead, a woman of good manners and some education, who is said to have begun life as waiting-woman to Mrs. Abington [q. v.] (Early Life of Samuel Rogers, p. 264). She took him to St. Anne's Hill, a house beautifully situated, with about thirty acres of land, near Chertsey in Surrey. Mrs. Armistead, to give her the title invariably used by Fox, appears to have bought this property about 1778 (Brayley, History of Surrey, ii. 238). There Fox indulged his tastes for gardening and literature, and thoroughly enjoyed a country life in company with a woman to whom he was sincerely attached, and who devoted herself to promoting his happiness. For some years he stayed in London during the sessions of parliament, and actively though vainly led the opposition. When Pitt brought forward his resolutions regulating the conditions of commerce between Great Britain and Ireland, he condemned them on the grounds that they would injure the mercantile interests of England, and would place Ireland in a position of dependence by imposing uncertain restraints ‘at the arbitrary demand of another state’ (Speeches, iii. 57 sq.). As one of the champions of English commercial interests he received a warm welcome at Manchester in September; this greatly pleased him, for he loved popularity (Memorials, ii. 270). In the previous April he expressed his approval of the principle of Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform, but objected to the proposal for buying up the borough seats, contending that the franchise was not a property but a trust. The attack on Hastings was begun the next year, and in May appeared Gillray's caricature, ‘Political banditti assaulting the Saviour of India,’ in which Fox appears attacking Hastings with a dagger. On 2 June Fox made an effective reply to Grenville's defence of Hastings against the charges brought against him by Burke with reference to the Rohilla war, and on the 13th laid before the committee the Benares charge, accusing Hastings of plundering Cheyt Sing, of causing the women taken at Bidgigur to be ill-treated, and of acting tyrannically at Benares; he concluded with a motion of impeachment. Pitt unexpectedly declared that he would vote for the motion, which was carried. Early in 1787 he took part in the debate on the Oude charge. He served on the committee appointed to draw up articles of impeachment, was one of the managers, and urged that Francis should be added to the number. During the progress of the trial, in 1788, he argued on the course of proceedings, opened the first part of the Benares charge in a speech which lasted five hours, and on 23 Dec. 1789 spoke with much force against the abatement of the impeachment by reason of the dissolution of parliament (Speeches, iv. 126).
In February 1787 Fox assailed the commercial treaty with France, though it certainly promised to be of great advantage to England. His opposition was based on political grounds. France, he said, was ‘the natural political enemy of Great Britain;’ she was endeavouring to draw England into ‘her scale of the balance of power,’ and to prevent it from forming alliances with other states. He advocated the claims of the dissenters to be exempt from disabilities on the score of religion, as he had advocated the cause of the Roman catholics seven years before. On 28 March he supported a motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and when the motion was renewed, on 1 May 1789, expressed his conviction that every country ought to have an established church, and that that church ought to be the church of the majority. He did not think it probable that the church of England would lose that position, but if the majority of the people should ever be for its abolition ‘in such a case the abolition ought immediately to follow.’ On 2 March following he moved the repeal himself. But the French revolution, and the writings of Priestley and Price, had convinced the house that it was possible that the church might be overthrown in England as it had been overthrown in France; Burke opposed his motion, and it was lost by nearly three to one (ib. iii. 315, iv. 1, 55). During 1785 the Prince of Wales often visited St. Anne's Hill in order to rave to Fox and his mistress about his passion for
