Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/358

Pitt House of Commons for Old Sarum, but vacated his seat on his appointment to the post of governor of the Leeward Islands in May 1728. He died at St. Kitts on 12 Sept. 1729, aged 41, and was buried in the family vault at Blandford.

He married, on 10 March 1717, Lady Frances Ridgeway, younger daughter and coheiress of Robert, fourth and last earl of Londonderry (created 1623), by whom he left two sons—viz. (1) Thomas, who succeeded as second earl, and died from a fall from his horse on 24 Aug. 1734, aged 17; (2) Ridgeway, who succeeded as third earl, and died unmarried on 8 Jan. 1765, aged 43, when all the honours became extinct—and one daughter, Lucy, who became the wife of Pierce Meyrick, the youngest son of Owen Meyrick of Bodorgan, Anglesey. His widow, who inherited the Cudworth estate in Yorkshire, married, in December 1732, Robert Graham, of South Warnborough, Hampshire, and died on 18 May 1772. There is no record of any speech made by him either in the Irish House of Lords or in the British House of Commons.

[Hutchins's History of Dorset, 2nd edit. i. 99; Boyer's Political State of Great Britain, xxxviii. 492; Gent. Mag. 1734 p. 452, 1765 p. 46, 1772 p. 247; Burke's Extinct Peerage, 1883 pp. 429, 430, 453; G.E.C.'s Complete Peerage, 1893, v. 130–1; Collins's Peerage of England, 1812, v. 46; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. ii. pp. 34, 45, 57, 68; Haydn's Book of Dignities, 1890, p. 727; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. v. 227.]  PITT, THOMAS, first (1737–1793), politician and connoisseur of art, born and baptised at Boconnoc in Cornwall on 3 March 1736–7, was the only son of Thomas Pitt (d 1760), lord warden of the Stannaries. William Pitt, first earl of Chatham [q. v.], was his father's elder brother. His mother was Christian, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, bart., of Hagley. He was admitted fellow-commoner at Clare College, Cambridge, on 7 Jan. 1754, and resided there until 1758. While at the university his uncle, William Pitt, sent him much advice in a series of sensible and affectionate letters, which were printed in 1804, and were included, together with the nephew's replies, in the ‘Chatham Correspondence.’ In 1759 Pitt obtained the degree of M.A. per literas regias.

Pitt's health was bad even as an undergraduate; he was ‘troubled with fits.’ In search of a cure he accompanied Lord Kinnoull, British ambassador to the court of Portugal, on his journey to Lisbon in January 1760. Gray and his friends contrived that Lord Strathmore, a college companion, should go with him; and Philip Francis, who praises Pitt and Strathmore as ‘most amiable young men,’ and retained throughout life the warmest attachment for Pitt, also joined the expedition. They entered the Tagus on 7 March 1760, and left Lisbon on 21 May 1760. Passing through Spain to Barcelona, they crossed to Genoa, and passed some time in Italy. Pitt corresponded with Gray, by whom he is called ‘no bad observer,’ and wrote a manuscript journal of his travels, a copy of which formerly belonged to Mr. Richard Bentley, and a second copy, by the Rev. William Cole, transcribed from that in the possession of Richard Gough, is No. 5845 of the Additional MSS. in the British Museum. Gough speaks with pleasure of this ‘most delicious tour, with most accurate descriptions, and some plans.’ Cole notes that the description of the bull-fight in the manuscript is identical with that in the Rev. E. Clarke's ‘Letters on the Spanish Nation,’ 1763 (pp. 107–13). Horace Walpole introduced Pitt to Sir Horace Mann at Florence as ‘not a mere matter of form, but an earnest suit to know him well,’ and praised his conduct in cutting off the entail to pay his father's debts and to provide for his sisters. Pitt was staying at Florence with his uncle, Sir Richard Lyttelton, and making himself very popular, when news arrived of the death of his father, on 17 July 1761.

He now became owner of the controlling interest in the parliamentary representation of Old Sarum and a considerable share in that of Okehampton in Devonshire. He accordingly sat for the former borough from December 1761 to the dissolution in March 1768, for Okehampton in the parliament from 1768 to 1774, and for Old Sarum from 1774 until his elevation to the peerage in January 1784. He followed in politics his near relative, George Grenville, who made him a lord of the admiralty in his ministry of 1763. He was invited, in compliment to his uncle, Chatham, to continue in office with the Rockingham ministry; but he was politically at variance with Chatham, and followed Grenville into opposition (cf., Memoirs of George III, i. 339–43, , Letters, iv. 238–45, and The Grenville Papers, ii. 232, 320–60).

At intervals Pitt played an active part in politics. He was one of the seventy-two whig members who met at the Thatched House Tavern, London, on 9 May 1769, to celebrate the rights of electors in the struggle for the representation of Middlesex; he seconded Sir William Meredith in his attempt to relax the subscription to the Thirty-