Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/356

 tile criticism, and the court found it necessary to reaffirm their confidence in his management. In May 1699 he was disabled by a fever. During the conflict between the old company, his masters, and the new company, which had been constituted on 5 Sept. 1698, Pitt vehemently defended the interests of the former. When, in September 1699, Sir William Norris [q. v.] landed as envoy of the new company to Aurungzib, Pitt declined to recognise him in the absence of orders from the old company. He pursued the new company's agent, his cousin, John Pitt, with the utmost rancour until his death, in 1703, denouncing him as crack-brained and inexperienced. These acrimonious disputes were determined by the union of the two rival companies in August 1702, and Pitt was continued in the presidency of Madras under the united company, to whom, on 3 Oct. 1702, he writes, quoting William's words to the French at Ryswick: ‘'Twas my fate, and nott my choice that made mee Your Enemy; and Since You and My Masters are united, Itt Shall bee my utmost Endeavours to purchase Your Good opinion and deserve your Friendship.’

Meanwhile he fearlessly defended the English settlements from attack. In February 1702 Daud Khan, nawab of the Carnatic, blockaded Madras. Pitt met the danger with a characteristic combination of shrewdness and boldness, and on 3 May the nawab retired with a small subsidy, agreeing to restore all that he had taken from the company or its servants (cf., Madras in the Olden Time, i. 359–60). In 1703, apparently at his own request, Pitt's term of five years' service was extended. In 1708–9 he opened a negotiation with the successor to Aurungzib for a commercial arrangement in favour of the company, to which great importance was attached by the inhabitants of Fort St. George, but the negotiation was cut short by Pitt's supersession.

Early in 1704 William Fraser had been appointed a member of his council. Pitt distrusted his new colleague from the first, and differences between them soon followed. In August 1707 a feud arose between certain castes at Madras. Fraser urged, at a council meeting, a mode of settlement which was opposed to that suggested by his chief, but was in agreement with a proposal made in a petition by one of the parties at feud. Pitt at once accused Fraser of collusion with the petitioners, and suspended him from the council, subsequently making him a prisoner at the fort. The matter was referred home, and was the subject of deliberate consideration. On 28 Jan. 1709 the court decided to remove Pitt and reinstate Fraser. Pitt, with characteristic promptitude, handed over his post and counted up the cash balance in the presence of the council on 17 Sept. 1709. He left Madras on the Heathcote about 25 Oct., transhipped at the Cape on to a Danish vessel, and landed at Bergen, where he stayed for the greater part of a year.

Pitt proved himself a resourceful governor. He maintained considerable pomp, yet the revenues of the factory continuously rose under his guidance. At one time he proposed to give some sort of municipal government within the bounds of the factory. To the value of judicious commercial experiments he was fully alive. Early in 1700 he shipped home new kinds of neck-cloths and chintzes. Sir Nicholas Waite calls him ‘the great president,’ and Peter Wentworth wrote that ‘the great Pits is turned out.’ ‘It was his general force of character, his fidelity to the cause of his employers (in spite of his masterfault of keenness in money-making), his decision in dealing with difficulties, that won his reputation. He was always ready; always, till that last burst which brought his recall; cool in action, however bitter in language; he always saw what to do, and did it’ ).

During the whole of his stay at Madras Pitt kept a look-out for large diamonds, which he utilised from time to time as a means of sending remittances to the company. In December 1701 a native merchant, called Jamchund, brought him a large, rough stone weighing 410 carats, for which he demanded 200,000 pagodas. The stone had been sold to Jamchund by an English skipper, who had stolen it from a slave. The latter had found it in the Parteal mines on the Kistna, and had secreted it in a wound in his leg. It was doubtless a vague knowledge of these circumstances which suggested Pope's lines: <poem. Asleep and naked as an Indian lay, An honest factor stole a gem away; He pledg'd it to the knight: the knight had wit, So kept the diamond, and the rogue was bit. (Moral Essay, Epist. iii. 361–5). Pope originally ended the last line with ‘and was rich as Pitt.’ But the imputation that Pitt had stolen the stone was ill-founded, as he proved before the council at Madras, and afterwards by an elaborate justification of his conduct which he wrote at Bergen in 1710, and which was subsequently published in the ‘Daily Post,’ 3 Nov. 1743. Pitt doubtless drove a hard bargain with Jamchund, who was finally induced to part with