Shrine at St. Ann’s Hill

An uncoloured issue. Charles James Fox, with unpowdered hair cropped after the Revolutionary style, kneels reverently in a stone crypt, before an altar on which are placed busts of Napoleon and Robespierre, flanking a bonnet rouge inscribed Egalité on a stand labelled Exit Homo. Above the altar are tablets of stone resembling the Ten Commandments on which are inscribed parodies of the Commandments. A plate above them inscribed Droits de l’Homme, is surmounted by a guillotine dripping blood and the altar is draped in a cloth embroidered by crossed assassins’ daggers. A book titled New Constitution projects from his pocket. From the upper left corner of the design descends a shaft of light in which are visible the winged heads of members of the opposition, all wearing bonnets rouge. In the lead is the Duke of Norfolk, followed by Bedford, Tierney and Lauderdale, with the tiny malevolent face of Nicholls in the background. A satire on the retirement of Fox to his house at St. Ann’s Hill during his secession from Parliament and the unrest in Ireland. BM 9217.