Failing to make a small seceding congregation there viable, he left within two years to become minister of the Unitarian chapel at Chichester.

[2] Around Fox and the chapel there gathered a group of progressive thinkers, including feminists and, through William Lovett, some adherents of Chartism.

[6] Fox's position as a leading Unitarian minister was jeopardized in 1834 when he left his wife for one of his wards, and became an advocate of freer divorce.

Charles Hardwick grouped Fox with Theodore Parker and Robert William Mackay as proponents of "absolute religion".

As a supporter of the Anti-Corn-Law movement, Fox won celebrity as an impassioned orator and journalist, and from 1847 to 1862 he intermittently represented Oldham in Parliament as a Liberal.

He was editor of the Monthly Repository, and a frequent contributor to the Westminster Review, and published works on political and religious topics.