Oxford remained dear to Fox and the friendships he formed over the card-table, and the various “rags” in which he took part were never forgotten by him. When the triumvirate went down, their ways at first lay separate. Eden’s time was occupied first in getting called to the Bar, and then, through the patronage of the Duke of Marlborough, to Parliament as member for Woodstock. Malmesbury, an incipient diplomatist while still at Winchester, left England and joined the British Embassy at Madrid. Fox left Oxford before the age of twenty-one, and was immediately returned to Parliament for Midhurst. For some twenty years the tide of life kept the three apart, each striving in his own quarter. Then in 1782 Fox, who had climbed higher up the ladder of fame than either of the other two, was reminded of the old friendships of his Undergraduate days. Malmesbury, then Sir James Harris, Knight of the Bath, was invalided home from the Embassy at St Petersburg, and was instantly appointed by Fox to be Minister at the Hague. The year after this, Eden, whose political career under the banner of Lord North was a distinguished one, came again into touch with Fox, and exerted himself to bring about a coalition between his own chief and his old Oxford friend. It is practically certain that the touch of sentiment roused by the remembrance of the old days, when Eden and he played cards and drank claret beneath the spires of Oxford, was the only reason why the coalition was brought about by Eden, for Fox afterwards publicly avowed in the House of Commons, when the rupture between North and himself was final, that “the greatest folly of his life was in having supported Lord North.” * * * * * “To the University of Oxford,” wrote Gibbon in after years, “I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life.”